


Hallowed

by LightningLaveau



Category: Captain America (Movies), Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine, captain america: the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cinderella Elements, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Modern AU, Multi, Road Trip, blood/gore mention, hoh!hawkeye, majorly ooc rumlow, rape mention, some brief Bucky/Rumlow content, trauma/recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:47:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 59,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightningLaveau/pseuds/LightningLaveau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Buchanan Barnes is cursed with perfect obedience, unable to refrain from following any commands given to him. Though he finds solace in the friendship of his schoolmate Steve Rogers, his life takes a turn for the worse when his wicked stepfather sends him off to what he is told is a remote school.<br/>Meanwhile, Rogers becomes disillusioned with his work in the military. Deciding instead to combat cruel public policy on the home front, he soon earns the enmity of a powerful politician. The twists and turns that reunite Barnes and Rogers culminate with three massive charity masquerade balls hosted by the now-famous Rogers himself. Commanded to attend all three balls, Barnes is tasked with a single mission: to end his beloved friend's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Archive warnings will be posted in the notes, bolded, at the beginning of each chapter. Subsequent chapters will begin with the previous chapter's summary.**   
> 

It had been a simple series of motions, steady and slow.

Letting his mother's hand go, turning resolutely away from the coffin, planting one foot in front of the other until the All Saints’ Episcopal Church’s smooth diamond-tiled floor gave way to unyielding concrete pavement, to gravel, to dirt, to soft grass. To roots.

That she had not ordered him on the spot to return spoke volumes.

 _“Ow—_ what the—?”

As though having sprouted into existence out of nowhere, the massive tree practically snatched him from away his intended path as he trudged along, holding him in the rough embrace he had missed the instant they’d broken the news to him, the pounding hug that had been ripped away by illness, or exhaustion, or fate. Which, one would never ever quite nail. As though it mattered anymore.

Bucky loved (had loved? still loved) his dad possibly more than any other breathing soul on the earth. It only made sense that he’d be the first to drop. Christ in hell knew that Bucky had hardly deserved him.

His face felt hot. Wet. _Fuck_. His favorite word. His mother's least favorite.

He was crying. Like a baby.  He was a _fucking_ baby, cradling his own chest, to where the sudden-tree’s limbs could not quite reach around.

Sudden-tree. His new most beloved soul in this world. If plants could have souls. (Could they not?)

For the tree would not order him to do anything. Could not. This was critical, the crux of his love for anyone—or anything, ha.

The tree could not know of his weakness, and so the tree could not abuse it—could not take advantage of it. The _thing_ , the agonizing force within him that enabled anyone else to override his own desires, his own intentions, his own personal boundaries. The Curse.

To the sudden-tree, Bucky was a normal kid. An actively grieving kid, yeah, in a suit his mother had picked out the day before, with not nearly enough layers to really do much to the thirty-degree winds reddening his nose and cheeks.

But nonetheless, a kid who could say _no, I won’t_ , without jagged lightning bolts of pain slashing through his body and shredding his mind, without limbs that would deaden and move against his wishes, betraying his own consciousness, locking him inside his own mind as he unwillingly carried out the intentions of all who made them clear to him.

“Hey, you!”

Bucky nearly jumped a foot in the air at the sound of another human’s voice. It had all too abruptly jerked him back into reality.

 _He’d left the church_. He was in public now, the risky space away from his mother—where any asshole could instruct him to _get in the car_ , to _follow_  them, to _hold still—_ and that’d be it.

No power on earth could prevent Bucky from following orders. Not wishes, nor suggestions, but orders. The imperative. Commands.

But _Hey, you_ hardly constituted a command. There was hope yet.

Bucky slowly turned about to find that the speaker was a little kid like himself—nah, way littler. Well, shorter, skinnier. He blinked and took a closer look.

He knew this kid. Their school was nearby, just a few blocks down. If zoning were anything to go by, the kid had to live not too far away, just like him. No, he’d definitely seen the little guy around before. On the playground, right? Or walking home, maybe.

“You okay? Nobody buggin’ ya?” Okay, that voice was way too deep for a kid with that tiny of a frame. Bucky nearly laughed. Nearly. No wonder he’d mistaken the kid for a grown, would-be thief.

Instead he quickly wiped his eyes on his nice suit sleeve, attempting to ignore the maternal growl resounding between his ears. “No. No, I—I’m fine. Uh, thanks.”

“Crying like that means you’re fine?”

Of course the little guy wanted a god damn conversation. But Bucky found himself laughing, for real this time. Well, as real as the hollowed-out gales cutting through his wrecked throat could pretend to be. He felt the corners of his mouth quirk up in spite of himself. “My dad’s dead.” Shit, his voice sounded awful. Ragged, empty. Close to a whisper. “They’re burying him right now.”

The kid sucked in a breath, actually taking a step back in shock. “Really?!”

Bucky nodded. Laughed. Fuck, his eyes had spilled over again. He wiped one more time.

“Here.”

He looked up to find that the kid had extended one hand out, holding a square of white cloth worn so thin that it looked nearly translucent. Bucky could clearly see the kid’s fingers straight through the cloth. Ancient—but clean, and soft.

“Thanks.” He took it, wiped his face, not entirely believing what was happening right now. Who even was this kid? …well, it couldn’t hurt to ask. Luckily for him, most people didn’t immediately follow first introductions with instructions. “What’s your name?”

“Steve Rogers.” The kid held his chin up as he said so. “You’re at MS fifty-one, right? Same as me?”

Bucky inhaled sharply. “Y-yeah.” And, oh, would his mother shriek at him now, “Seventh grade.”

“Sixth. Oh, hey, keep it for a while,” Steve cut in, folding Bucky’s fingers over the handkerchief in his outstretched hand. “Just in case. Me—” He hesitated. “ _My_ ma’s been dead for a while now….can’t remember the last time I needed that.”

 _No kidding?_ Bucky swallowed, closing his fist tight around the little cloth. Steve’s hand had been amazingly warm against the bitter late-February wind. “Thanks. And…sorry to, uh, hear that.” What was the word he was supposed to use? “Condolences.”

Steve shrugged.  _Keep it for a while,_ he had definitely told him. _A while?_

See, the curse had its loopholes. Bucky had learned by this point to _not fuck around_ with using those to his advantage whenever possible, no matter how small or insignificant the task. “How long’s a while?”

“However long you need.” Steve smiled, and damn if that didn’t have some kind of contagious effect. Bucky felt his own mouth curve upward and took a deep, shuddering breath.

He felt a warm weight on his back. Well, weight was nearly a misnomer—the kid’s hand was mostly bone, by both look and feel—but it was still god damn warmer than anything else in that park. Bucky found himself leaning back ever so slightly into Steve’s arm. “Hang in there. Is your—is the rest of your family nearby?”

“They’re back at All Saints’,” he confessed. “I kinda… left in the middle of the funeral.”

And Steve actually nodded instead of throwing Bucky the judgmental look for which he’d been preparing himself. “I did the same at my dad’s funeral. Couldn’t just—”

“Hold up, _both_ of your parents are dead?” Bucky wheezed, dumbfounded. “You’re an orphan?!”

“Yeah.” Steve gave an apologetic grin. “My ma passed away not too long after him. I stay with my aunt ‘n uncle now.”

“Dang, I’m sorry.” And the kid was even younger than Bucky? Lord.

Steve shook his head before making eye contact again. “Hey, uh, tell me where you live, and I’ll—”

“Three sixty-nine Eleventh Street,” Bucky blurted out as the Curse sucked at his tongue. _Fuck—_

“—get my aunt to bring over some… food for your family,” Steve slowly trailed off, his eyes widening. “Okay, uh, cool. I can remember that—”

“—but you really don’t have to,” Bucky cut in, trying his darnedest to _not panic_. “And don’t pressure your aunt into doing anything either. I mean, unless she really wants to? Uh.  But, yeah, I really appreciate it. Everything.” He pointedly squeezed the handkerchief.

Steve squinted carefully at him. Oh, fuck. Oh, no—

“Tell me your name.”

Automatically, “James Buchanan Barnes.” He licked his lips, averting his gaze. _Does he know?_ “…but I go by Bucky.”

Steve nodded numbly, his mouth pulling into a wide smile. “Tell me how old you are.”

“I turn thirteen in two weeks,” he muttered, feeling his heart ice over. _Fuck,_ fuck, he knew, he fucking _knew—_

“Aw, I don’t turn thirteen ‘til July.” Steve crossed his arms. “Tell me how you’re feeling right now.”

“Cold. Kinda sick.” He blinked. “Scared.”

Steve immediately sucked in a breath, his face falling. “Sorry. I’ll stop. Yeah, you look cold. I’ll, uh, quit holding you up. You should get back to church.”

Bucky’s jaw dropped as Steve turned in place to walk back out of the park.

 _…That was it _…__?

Just—he was just going to leave, after all that? No kid his age would even hesitate to use him, probe at his mind, test how far the Curse could go. Well, not in all his experience, at least. Too many close calls.

Who the hell was _that good_ of a person?

“Hey. Uh—wait.”

Steve halted and glanced back. “What’s up?”

Bucky took a step forward, then another. Nudged Steve’s shoulder with his own. “Which bus stop do you get on at for school?” he asked, his stomach beginning to dance. “We could meet there, Monday morning. If you’d like.”

“You wanna ride together?” Steve replied, a smile slowly spreading across his thin face. “And, uh. My aunt’s house is at one-ninety-six Nineteenth Street,” he added. It sounded nearly like an apology. “Since you told me yours.”

Apology or no, that information was his now. His world had grown that much larger.

“That’s not far from me at all. I could meet you at the stop on Sixteenth.” He would need to walk five blocks, in the opposite direction from his school, to do so. _Am I going crazy?_

Steve had begun to beam by then. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s perfect—if you want—”

“I do.” Bucky grinned, feeling a telltale flush creeping onto his neck. _Quit it. Trying to be cool here._

But his was not the only reddened face at that point. “Oh—and the offer still stands. I know my aunt would make you ‘n your mom anything that would make you feel better. Promise. Just say the word.”

How earnest, that gleam in his eyes. How hopeful. Who had ever looked at him that way before? No one Bucky could name.  “I’ll ask my mom,” he replied, biting his lip to keep from smiling. “Thanks. It means a lot.”

A blissfully warm little hand found his and squeezed for too short of a second. “Well, I’ll let you get back to your family, Bucky. See ya later.”

And Steve Rogers was gone, striding jauntily back toward where the sun had begun to set in those few hot minutes. Bucky shook his head, still not believing that the past few minutes had been real.

_When’s later?_

That little punk fucking _knew_.

But he had still calmed Bucky down, had lent him one of his possessions, meager though it may have been. Had offered food, company. Friendship.

And Bucky hadn’t even taken two measly seconds to ask where the bruise on Steve’s jaw had come from.

_I’m a fucking jerk._

* * *

The joke was that Bucky did find out, less than a day later.

It turned out Stephen Grant Rogers was a tiny whirlwind troll of a kid, nearly peeing his pants while talking to a girl one second then challenging high school linebackers that he’d found kicking a homeless man to fistfights the next.

 _Challenge,_ now there was a fucking misnomer and a half. Kid was a glutton for punishment. A masochist, maybe. He seemed to perceive absolutely no issue in telling guys three times his weight to _shut up_ or _quit it_ or _leave her alone_. Oof.

On that particular day, it had taken two of the three offenders to hold the tiny kid back, with the third barely landing one punch out of every four as Steve writhed and ducked. Fast little mother.

“Really, Reynolds? Three on one?” Bucky called out, setting his grocery bag on the ground as he approached. “Why dontcha pick on someone your own size?”

Okay, so maybe seeing Steve’s face light up just then nearly made him forget about the funeral fiasco the day before. Nearly.

“Yeah? You want some too, Barnes?” The lout gestured to his two friends to drop Rogers and began trudging toward Bucky, in a way that perhaps had been meant to look intimidating.

But Bucky had been coiled all too tightly the past few weeks. Despair, longing, pleading, misery—all the cold reactions—had been exhausted. Their dearth left him manic, left him pissed, rendered him all too ready to crack an ugly motherfucker’s jaw wide open—

Only Steve, now freed from the clutches of Reynolds’ two buddies, had beaten him to the finish line.

Bucky nearly cracked up as Steve lifted one skinny leg and stomped the sole of his sneaker into the bully’s lower back, practically silent in his approach and altogether more speedy. Reynolds crumpled like an empty Coke can and crashed into the unluckier of his pals. Bucky all too happily punched the remaining teen, an uppercut so perfect his dad would’ve been—fuck. Would’ve been _proud_.

_S’ how they did it in prison. Y’won’t gotta worry about him wakin’ up anytime soon, kiddo. Buy yourself some time._

Aw, fuck.

“Did you knock him _unconscious?_ ” Steve breathed, his eyes practically sparkling. “Teach me.”

Oh, he’d just _had_ to—“Your stance is important. You gotta start with your right leg forward—”

“Not _now_ ,” Steve cackled. “Later. Isn’t your house another street down?”

 _When’s later?_ “Yeah,” Bucky replied, eying the bruise spreading steadily across Steve’s neck. _That needs ice._ “Yeah, it is. Let’s go.”

And Steve’s warm hand found his, tugging him up out of the alleyway and back onto the main thoroughfare. “Don’t forget your groceries!”

What a god damn sweetheart. Bucky dipped and grabbed the paper bag without breaking his stride as they continued up the road.

They trooped into Bucky’s house. Steve removed his threadbare coat and hung it on the entryway rack as Bucky set the bag on the counter and grabbed an ice pack from the freezer. “Hold this to your neck.”

“You sure…? _Yeow_ , that stings!”

“Serves you right for taking on three high school kids at once.”

“They were hurting the old man!”

It had become increasingly difficult not to smile as he derided Steve. “You should’ve called the police. What if they’d knocked you out?”

“The cops always take too long! I couldn’t just sit there and—” Steve hissed as Bucky sprayed Neosporin on the gash at his elbow. “Warn me next time!”

“Only if you make sure that _next time_ isn’t anytime soon.” _As though I can make that call…_

“No promises on that.” Steve gazed around their kitchen as Bucky unloaded his grocery bag. “Your place is _nice_.”

Was it? Bucky had deemed it average. Then again, he could count the times he’d spent in another kid’s house on one hand. He did know that there were two distinct types of buildings in his neighborhood—the recently rejuvenated ones with young and wealthy owners, and the shoddier ones belonging to families that had lived in them for generations. With a pang of some kind of emotion he could not quite name, Bucky realized he could guess which type Steve lived in.

“Uh, thanks.” Finally satisfied with his handiwork, he began to put away the groceries.

Steve inhaled sharply behind him. “Oh, hi there, ma’am.”

“Bucky, _who—_ ” His mom had halted in the doorway looking as though she’d seen her life flash before her red-rimmed eyes.

“Friend from school,” he’d explained, giving her his warmest smile. _Well, I’m not wrong._ “This is Steve. He, uh, he took a bad fall. Is it—is it alright if he hangs here for a bit?” Oh, and to add a cherry on top, “I put all the groceries away. The deli man gave his condolences—put in an extra pound of ham at no charge.”

“I don’t want to be a bother, ma’am,” Steve quickly added. “If you’d like me to leave, it’s really no problem.”

She blinked, looking the scrawny, bloodied little thing over. Perhaps if Steve had looked any tougher, she would have not approved. Bucky would never know. But his mom could clearly tell that something other than a _bad fall_ had taken place, given the pitying look in her eyes, the weak smile.

“You’re more than welcome to stay, Steve. Bucky, I’ll be in in the living room if you boys need anything. I’ll add Mr. Lee to the thank-you note list. He is such a dear…” She nodded to herself and edged away. That they had entered the house during the one hour per day she hadn’t spent crying was its own little phenomenon.

“Yeah, I’ll definitely ask my aunt to stop by,” Steve murmured under his breath. “Sorry again. I know how tough it is.” With his free hand he squeezed Bucky’s elbow.

Bucky smiled, ignoring the sting in his eyes. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“If I explain, then you gotta promise not to tell _anyone_ ,” he eventually conceded once Steve dropped _the_ question. “Deal?”

“Deal.” Steve gazed idly around the sunny room, from Bucky’s Michael Jordan posters and scant few little league trophies to the huge bookshelves overstuffed with novels of every genre. “Did your parents make you that way? Tell you to be, I dunno. Obedient?”

“Nah.” Though his dad had commanded him not to mention the Curse to anyone, Bucky could still give hints. “I wish I were able to talk about it better.”

“Yeah?” Steve stood up on his tip toes to read the titles on the books just over his head. “Wait, did they tell ya not to talk about it? And you had to obey that, too?”

“You might be onto something,” Bucky grumbled, lying back on his unmade bed. Unmade for the past month, probably. Sure felt like it. “So. I know it’s a lot to ask, but. Uh. It’d mean a lot to me if, uh…”

Fuck. To even ask this would to nonetheless be planting the idea in Steve’s mind. Could Bucky even afford that?

No one had ever made it this far. Not in his entire life. He’d taken such great care to be respected just enough in class for people to like him without latching on the way Steve had in the first minute they’d met. Had said all the right words, had made all the right faces at the right jokes, knew who to pointedly ignore, who to look bored in front of. And even then he’d made mistakes, had been unable to avoid certain situations. Had eventually come home crying, or had been lucky enough for a parent or teacher to intervene. Had eventually stopped reaching out to people, had quit responding to their introductions, lest they blossom into something cruel.

But he’d overridden his own rules with Steve. Had made a gamble. The biggest risk of his life yet, he mused. “It’d be amazing if you could, just. Uh.” He jerked his head back and forth, feeling a bead of cold sweat run down his cheek. “If you could…”

“You don’t want me to order ya around,” Steve finished for him.

Bucky nodded, his chest tightening as the blood all seemed to rush to his face. This was something close to embarrassing. Distressing.

“I promise I won’t ever try to do that to you, Bucky.” Bucky felt a warm hand tip his chin up. Steve’s eyes practically glowed with purpose. “I _mean_ it.”

“I have to take your word for it,” Bucky replied with a dry laugh. “Not much I can do, you know?”

Steve narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing Bucky’s face as though searching for something beneath his skin. “Okay. Say I ever accidentally tell you to do something. D’you think you could…I dunno… like, signal that I’m doing it? Just a hand motion or something, so I know to stop? I mean, it’s up to you—but—”

 _What_. Bucky had never even thought of that. Then again, he’d never had the opportunity for the alternative to take place.

Right up until the past few months, his childhood had been high fences, locked doors, his mom or his dad always within earshot. And who could blame them?

A man had nearly walked off with Bucky, at a playground nearly a decade ago. “ _Follow me_.” That was all it had taken.

Bucky had all too happily watched his dad appear as though from out of nowhere, smash the man in his face, and stomp him a few times for good measure once he’d crumpled to the ground. And he’d lifted Bucky onto his shoulder, _commanded_ him to not follow strangers when they asked.

If only that had been how the Curse worked. No command was eternal, or unending. Time frames had to be stated, or heavily implied, for any task not to be accomplished immediately.

Age nine, he’d gotten in a fight with another boy on the soccer field. Bucky had _stolen_ his shot, had made the goal that the boy _deserved_ to score, had _ruined_ the game. Bucky was a _thief_. _Go drown yourself_ , he’d spat, earning a rapid slap from the soccer coach. Nothing hard enough to bruise; just enough to get the brat’s attention, and remorse.

But Bucky had already begun walking toward the pond on the other side of the jogging trail. Weeping openly, he walked. Clenching his fists so tightly that his nails bore into his skin, had drawn blood. Grinding his teeth into dust. And still he’d walked.

Finally, two feet from the pond, a resounding _“Stop!”_ had added at least another four years to his life span. His mom had noticed, had asked the kid to repeat his last statement. Had yanked him out of soccer practice. Had yanked him out of school. Had changed boroughs, so they’d be zoned for a completely different school district. Even at the time, Bucky knew.

But as he aged, he aged quickly. As a twelve-year-old he could pass for fifteen. Far less of a prime kidnapper target. And he had quickly learned how to avoid getting in dumb situations, figured out how to avoid people’s attention. Slowly, gradually, his poor mother let him out of the house to pick up groceries or to mail a letter. The fact that she let him bring Steve upstairs, out of her line of sight, spoke volumes—either of her trust, or her current grief.

“Never thought of doing that,” he murmured. “Maybe not a gesture, if you’re telling me to do something. I could… make a face?”

“Ha, yeah. Good idea. What’s gonna be your ‘Shut Up, Steve’ face?”

Bucky threw him his best deadpanned stare, completely devoid of emotion. Blank.

Steve bit his knuckle to keep from laughing. “Perfect.”

God, he looked so cute with that finger in his mouth.

“Dunno if I wanna call it the ‘Shut Up, Steve’ face.” Bucky exhaled slowly and twisted around on the bed. If he craned his neck, he could just barely glimpse a few flyaway strands of Steve’s hair, glowing in the dying sunlight streaming through his little bedroom window. “Maybe just _The Face_.”

When he finally turned back over, he found Steve had begun sketching on a loose sheet of printer paper. Tongue between his teeth, shoulders hunched over in concentration. Some intense-ass sketching.

“Whatcha drawing?”

“The Face. So I can memorize it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. You look like a statue.” He chewed his tongue for a second. “This is gonna be my masterpiece.”

Bucky choked back a laugh. “Gonna look like something out of a horror movie. Lemme give you a better face than that.” And he rolled forward on the bed, kicking his legs out behind him and propping his head on his hands. Gave Steve his sweetest, most serene smile. “This. Draw me like this.”

Steve bit his lip in a way that made Bucky’s cock twitch. _Whatever that meant._ Weird puberty stuff his dad had mentioned once or twice. He’d worry about it later.

“Yeah. You’re right. Way better."

* * *

 Lazy afternoons like that one began to pile on. Became weeks, ones that Bucky looked forward to. Weekends, ones that Bucky reminisced on during classes or before bed. Became months. Years.

Nearly every day, Steve walked to class with him, and met him for lunch, and followed him around all afternoon. Nearly.

Sometimes Bucky had to run errands for his mom at the same time Steve had to be home with his aunt. Sometimes Steve had hospital checkups that lasted hours, or required an overnight stay. Sometimes Bucky would wait outside the school building and not find his friend. Would have to guess where he’d wandered off to, who he’d pissed off, how long Bucky had to get there in time to intervene.

Sometimes Bucky wouldn’t arrive in time. Sometimes his _Steve is being a stupid punk again_ senses went off a few minutes too late, or when he was too far away from the scene to save the kid’s scrawny ass.

Sometimes Bucky carried a bloody pulp on his back to Methodist Hospital and had to sit up all night, keeping one eye on the EKG monitor, asking nurses for a phone so he could let his mom know that he’d be late. Yeah, Steve again. Yeah, he’d make it. No, there were no knives involved. Not this time.

Sometimes it was only one arm or one leg or half his face reduced to a bloody pulp, and Bucky would lift a protesting Steve over one shoulder and carry him to his house, to his mother’s massive stockpile of hydrogen peroxide bottles and tubes of Neosporin and Band-aids in every shape and size, all left over from his dad’s pub escapades.

Sometimes Steve would tell Bucky to _let him do it_ , _he’s a man now and he knows how to apply a freakin’ butterfly bandage_ , until Bucky would make The Face and Steve would instantly retract that order, would lower his arms. Would lean a hair’s breadth closer into Bucky’s hand, would gently lower his eyelids until those ungodly long eyelashes brushed against Bucky’s palm.

Sometimes he could persuade Steve to give his aunt a call, asking her permission to stay over at the Barnes’ house yet again. Always she cackled and told Bucky to keep him alive til she could give him a stern talking-to the next day.

For the first time in memory, Bucky had found an order that he whole-heartedly longed to carry out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bucky's brownstone](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.667352,-73.986017,3a,75y,34.58h,95.46t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sr0MWo2QAaxCP6-WfFwg2JQ!2e0) is about a fifteen-minute walk away from [Steve's house](https://www.google.com/maps/place/196+19th+St,+Brooklyn,+NY+11232/@40.663276,-73.993584,3a,52.5y,200h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sxTTG7HDvJJHmTnSHDUQW9A!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x89c25ae5e42271a1:0x6f1bc4a1483a0fd5). They are super 90s kids at this point in the fic.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Steve was spoiling him.

It was tragic, really, how relaxed Bucky had become in the years they’d been friends. His future had once hung over him ominously, a gray void where one wrong turn or poorly-chosen word would have landed him as someone’s effective slave or worse.

Steve had beguiled him into a drunken bliss, had painted over that gray in glistening sunset hues. School had become bearable, then something he’d looked forward to once Steve made it into the same high school as his. They’d cut gym class together, would smoke or discuss dream motorcycle makes or bet on which players the Yanks would draft for the oncoming season.

Sometimes Steve would bring his sketchbook along. Those were the best days.

And sometimes they’d run into Steve’s frequent-flier opponents. Those were generally the worst days.

Bucky had come to the conclusion long ago that it was no coincidence his dad had taught him how to effectively fight. More specifically, how to effectively incapacitate someone way bigger than himself.

The trouble was some of the taunts the conscious ones would throw behind as they retreated.

“ _Go fuck yourself, Barnes,_ " was an increasing favorite.

 _Ow._ The red hot punishment-pain started up immediately; Bucky panicked, not knowing how to banish it this time.

“Don’t do whatever he just said, Buck,” Steve quickly coughed, rubbing his purpling jaw. “Something else. Uh. Turn around 'n let me see if you're bleeding anywhere." He sighed. "You'd think the Curse would forgive you for not knowing how to accomplish something..."

Bucky had insisted that Steve use his nickname for it. Giving it a name made it a target, made it seem smaller and more manageable than if it had remained a nameless, painful void.

Amazing, really, how a shared secret could make the weight of its burden feel so much lighter.

"Doubt it," Bucky grumbled, turning in place nonetheless. Thankfully the blinding pain in his eyeballs and joints receded as he followed Steve’s command. "Still, it could be worth experimenting sometime, in case I ever get told that when...eh, when I'm alone..."

Steve sighed and lifted the hem of Bucky’s shirt to examine a bruise on his lower back. “Don’t—” He caught himself before Bucky could make The Face. “I _wish_ you wouldn’t waste energy thinking about that stuff, Buck. Life’s too short.”

Bucky pulled Steve around to face him, drawing one skinny arm around his hip. “It’s tough to not dwell on worst-case scenarios. Knock on wood, I guess.”

Steve winced the way he usually did when the more horrifying aspects of Bucky’s curse surfaced in their chats. “But it's still awful. You ever heard of anybody else stuck with it? No one on the internet?” He carefully laid his hand over Bucky’s bruise, soaking it in warmth. Funny, how they were both aware that Steve radiated heat like an incandescent bulb. Bucky idly hoped it wasn’t because of a fever this time.

“Oh, I’ve looked.” And looked and looked and looked. “Everywhere on the surface net. I don’t know dick about the deepnet or I’d’ve looked there, too.”

“What if we found a hacker—someone from one of those intelligence communities? Knows how penetrate a government database or something?” Steve frowned thoughtfully. “If there’s more than one person like you out there, I’d bet someone’s noticed. It’s like some occult shit—like you'd need an exorcist to fix it. Or a voodoo priestess.”

Steve’s aunt would have throttled him had she overheard that last sentence. Bucky licked his lips. “Well, if you ever meet a hacker, lemme know. I’d let ‘em do whatever they wanted to me so long as they broke the spell afterwards.”

Steve grimaced. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do, though. It’s gotta be better than the alternative, right? One person versus, oh, who knows. Maybe hundreds. If it ever got out, big-time, and someone managed to abduct me.” Bucky smiled, feeling a peculiar bitterness coat the sides of his tongue. “Worst case scenario? I get passed around for the rest of my life, like a—”

_“Buck—”_

“Just saying.” Bucky nuzzled the joint of Steve’s neck and shoulder, the spot he knew would set him off. “You gonna go back to class?”

“Like going back would do me any good. My transcript won’t matter once I enlist.” Steve sighed, wrapping his other arm loosely around Bucky’s waist in resignation. He knew not to push when Bucky brought up _worst-case-scenario._

“Maybe you don’t have to throw yourself into a warzone, bud.” Truth be told, the mere thought of Steve leaving town made Bucky sick to his stomach. “How awful is a two-year degree? You could pick up a trade. Fuck, go to art school. You know you got the talent for it.”

“All the good ones are expensive, man. You know that.” Steve groaned, pressing his forehead against Bucky’s shoulder. “We’re not in poverty over here or anything, but I’d be lucky to get out of a community college without a ton of loans.”

“Don’t give up,” Bucky gently pleaded. “My stepdad likes you, remember? He’d totally fork over whatever you’d need to pick up a trade. Maybe not art school, yeah, but—”

“No offense, but your stepdad kinda creeps me out,” Steve admitted. “I think he likes me a little too much.”

“He’s like that with everybody,” Bucky laughed. “Even me. D’you know he buys my mom fresh flowers every week? Hasn’t missed a single time in the whole year they’ve been married.”

“What’s he do that’s got him so much cash?” Steve shook his head. “Do I wanna know?”

“He’s way up in the government. All of his buddies are politicians. Maybe he likes that you’re so into the army, for all I know. He’s been pushing for increased defense spending, tighter border control…”

“All the more reason for me to enlist. I get what I want, _and_ I make your stepdad happy.”

 _I wouldn’t be happy,_ Bucky wanted to whisper into the near-translucent skin of Steve’s neck. _Stay with me,_ he could have begged. _I don’t want you getting hurt out there,_ he could have said. _I love you._

“Go back to class,” Bucky jeered instead, giving him a push towards the school. “Catch up with you later, punk.”

“Jerk.” Steve took a step back and gave him a once-over. “C’mere.”

Technically an order. But the burning had no chance to even begin, the lightning bolts too slow to keep up with the speed of Bucky’s compliance.

He threw himself into Steve, locking his arms around his friend’s slight frame and parting those lips with his tongue. He felt Steve’s deft hands trace up under his shirt and along his back, kneading his spine, dipping lower and squeezing him through his jeans. _God_ that stupid kid could use his hands. Bucky laughed into Steve’s mouth, tracing Steve’s tongue with his own before sharply pulling away and turning in place. “See you later,” he called over his shoulder as he strode away.

“I’d better,” Steve growled before trudging off across the field.

Heh. _Later_ had become his favorite word.

* * *

By the time Bucky’s mom had begun dating Pierce, Bucky could only feel relieved. She’d just been so goddamn miserable, alone in that house with her grumpy son from whom she couldn’t even get the satisfaction of ordering to his room. Grounding Bucky meant nothing; he’d practically been grounded his entire short, fear-drenched life. Their brownstone had grown too quiet without his dad’s boisterous laughter or thunderous footsteps. He had ever only been violent outside the house, toward other men, outside of bars or casinos. He had treated Bucky and his mom like treasures, never raising a hand to them save to crush them in his classic overpowering embraces, each one guaranteed to knock the wind out of Bucky. At least his dad had always trusted him to not shatter into a thousand pieces upon contact. He missed that trust.

Alexander Pierce was not boisterous, nor thunderous, nor particularly loud at all, ever. He spoke with a self-assured, long-practiced cadence of some sort of university professor mixed with an Episcopalian wedding deacon, of the short-sermon variety (no fucking wonder his mom had fallen so hard for the guy). More importantly (to her, at least), the man looked eerily similar to Robert Redford. Uncannily similar. Sometimes Bucky felt the urge to squint and pinch himself.

So when Bucky returned home and locked the front door behind him, Pierce had all but snuck up on him, waiting in the kitchen with ninja-like silence.

 _“Whoa—_ uh, hey.”

“Heya, James.” Pierce never called him Bucky. And Bucky, for that matter, had never quite decided whether or not he liked this. “Got a second?”

“Uh, sure. Oh, hey, Mom.”

“Sweetheart.” His mother gently kissed him on the cheek. “Why don’t you sit down with us? Alex has something he’d like to propose to you.”

Huh. Bucky good-naturedly sat at the little kitchen table along with her and Pierce, hoping the sudden jump in his heart rate to be indicative of, well, nothing. “What’s up?”

“I know it’s been hard for you, son,” Pierce began. The _son_ thing happened pretty frequently; Bucky had never really minded, passing it off as a politician habit. Well, he hadn’t minded until right now. “The fact that you made it through high school—much less with such good grades—after going through such a tragic loss, kid, well, it’s impressive. You and your mother are such inspirations, and you mean the world to me. You know that, don't you?”

Bucky swallowed, nodding. _Where’s this going?_

“Now, I haven’t blamed you at all for not looking at colleges last year,” Pierce continued. _Oh, shit._ “It’s a stressful procedure, all those tests and visits and interviews. Especially when you’re still a little, ah. Lost. When you’re not too sure what it is you want to do with your life. When it seems like there’s no room in the world for someone like yourself.”

It would have been so good to be able to tell him, _no, I fucking know what I want with my life. You’re wrong. You’re not sending me to college, because you don’t understand what it is I need. You’re not about to tell me I’m leaving the house because you think I need to get my shit in gear and that you can’t think of any other way to go about it._

But then Bucky would be lying.

The fact was that Pierce was dead correct with his little statement there. For all intents and purposes, Bucky was lost. Had been lost. Longer than Pierce may have known himself. Maybe he’d been lost his entire life, growing up with that thing inside of him, under his mother’s iron bars and his father’s paranoia-inducing lessons and his own bone-chilling, all-encompassing dread of the future.

“Yeah,” he found himself croaking. “Maybe, yeah.”

Pierce flashed him a sympathetic smile and continued. “So I’m not entirely off the mark. Well, I spoke with your mother a few weeks ago, and have had to pull a few favors since then. But my work has come to fruition!” He cleared his throat. “I’m pretty close with the dean of the Lemurian-Star Institute, up in Massachusetts. Got her to take a look at your school records, your grades. Normally they don’t make special cases like this, seeing as the fall semester’s nearly halfway through.”

 _Holy shit._ Yet Bucky played it cool. “But…?”

Pierce beamed. “She told me she’d be honored if you’d consider attending. It’s not a big school at all, a few hundred kids. Very secluded, very peaceful. Your mother and I actually toured the campus on our vacation last month.”

“It’s lovely, honey. And they have a wonderful special needs training program for all of the staff members. The best in the country. You’d be _safe,_ ” she stressed, placing her hand over his, hope burning in her eyes like a fever.

 _But I can’t leave him. I won’t leave him._ Steve’s face flashed relentlessly through Bucky’s vision, his blue eyes shining up at him like he was the whole god damn universe. _Don’t do this to me. Don’t take me away from Steve. Please, don't make me do this._

He must have appeared distressed, because Pierce’s face immediately fell. “I understand, of course,” he quickly cut in, “if it’s still too much to think about right now. By no means am I telling you what’s going to happen, or what you should choose! This is just one option, James. Please, just think it over, perhaps? Give it a while? Sleep on it?”

The amazing thing was that Pierce hadn't even ordered anything of him. At all. These were wishes, suggestions, upturned inflections that exuded uncertainty. Because an order would have made Bucky his enemy, would have automatically guaranteed enmity. No, Pierce was either too kind or too smart.

Bucky knew he could say no. Could tell Pierce no, could put all the work the man had done to waste, could tell his mother that he wanted to keep sulking around the house for all eternity.

No, not all eternity. He’d sulk around the house for a few more months at best, until Steve enlisted in the _fucking_ army.

Then…what. What? Nothing. The void had returned, its gray inscrutable depths sucking away at his life force, taunting him from afar. Steve’s rainbow paint had chipped away, ever only having disguised it, having spoiled Bucky, having duped him into forgetting that the void beyond still endured.

Much as he loathed to admit it, Bucky knew there was no way in hell he could cling to Steve for the rest of the poor kid’s life. No one deserved to be held back from their goals and dreams like that. So what if Bucky had no hope? He still had zero right to take away that of other people.

It was amazing how selfish the most obedient person in the world had become in six short years.

Well, Pierce had given him a way out. Or, if not an out, a window—a glimpse, maybe, into a potentially newer and better life, one where he’d not be a drain on Steve, would not waste away after Steve’s inevitable departure. Fuck, even his mom had given it the seal of approval. It was as though her bars and locks had been lifted up another twenty feet over his head, giving him that much more room to breathe.

And for once this would be something he initiated. Not passively accepting, not begrudgingly complying. For the first time in memory, Bucky could take the reins of his own existence.

_So be it._

“Actually, that sounds amazing,” he told Pierce, smiling at his mom. “When could I start?”

Pierce beamed, squeezing his shoulder. “I knew you’d be interested. And I’d be happy to take the day off as soon as you’re ready to head up! Just let me give the dean a call. And I imagine you’ll want to let Steve know.”

Bucky felt his heart ice over at the sound of Steve’s name in Pierce’s voice. Fuck.

How the hell could he drop this bomb on Stevie? How?

“Y-yeah. I’d better call him. And, uh, start, uh, packing.” _Packing._ “Let me know when dinner’s ready?”

“Sure thing,” his mother breathed through her joyous laughter. “Oh, honey, I’m so proud of you! I know this is a lot to handle at once. But I think you made the right decision.”

Bucky swallowed, giving her the best smile he could manage. “Thanks, mom. And—" He turned to Pierce. "Hey, I owe you a ton. For setting all this up.” He held out his arms and let Pierce hug him. Not the crushing rock-hugs like his dad’s, but far gentler, as though Bucky were some type of proximity bomb. Set to blow at the slightest of pressure.

“It’s no problem at all, James. Anything I can do to help you out, you just say the word. You know how it is.” He grinned, his eyes misting. “Any idea when you’d like to head up?”

Bucky shrugged. “The sooner the better, since I’ve already missed half a semester. Are you busy tomorrow?”

Pierce’s eyes widened. “Tomorrow! Well. In any case, I’m more than happy to reschedule my conferences. Politicians need to hear the word “no” far more often, if you ask me! Just let me call the school up tonight, and we’ll be all set.” He gave Bucky another wedding deacon grin. _Christ._

“Thanks. Be down in a while.”

But as Bucky trudged up to his room, his phone felt heavier and heavier in his pocket.

What could he _say?_

_Hey, so we both know that you’re the absolute love of my life, and that this is gonna be like ripping my own arm off, but I’m leaving town. Tomorrow. Just so I don’t have to be the one told goodbye._

_This way, at least I get to be the one to leave first._

_Because I am weak and a coward and a jerk. And you deserve better._

Fuck, what was there even for Steve to say? He'd just look so _sad._ For a kid who rarely cried, he'd sure had the motions down to an art form in the rare instances that had merited them. That was honest-to-god the last thing Bucky needed burned into his brain—the worst possible vision of Steve he’d have to remember for, what, months?

_No. Don't cry, Stevie. Don't cry, sweetheart. Please, no._

He wanted to remember Steve the way he’d looked earlier that afternoon—relaxing against him, his face and neck flushed, those blue eyes swimming under those golden eyelashes, that deep voice sighing into his mouth—

Bucky dropped his phone onto the bed. No. _No._

It was better this way. Or so he told himself.

Besides, he could always call or message Steve, after he’d settled down, had let the emotions drain off—right? It wasn’t like they were gonna be apart forever.

Instead Bucky packed up his books and clothes, throwing a couple of keepsakes into a smaller box, and checked the school’s website on his laptop. Yeah, looked like a nice place. Nice people. Lots of trees.

Eventually he pranced downstairs when his mom called him for dinner, having made all of his favorite foods. He laughed with her and Pierce, pretending all the while that he’d made a sufficient goodbye to Steve. Over the phone. Yup.

But they were gonna be fine, he reminded himself. No need to get all dramatic.

* * *

Itching. Scratching. Relief.

“Now what?”

“Hush.”

Her characteristically rapid typing, more machine-gun fire than query input.

“You digging inside? Or out?”

“In.” Rapid inhalation. “Incoming red-stamp. Full regimen. Projected for five-year program completion, should he survive—” A hiss. “ _Eighteen_ years old?”

Huh. Quite like her. And himself, incidentally. But that age... “Any medical records? Previous training? Has he done time—?”

A pained groan. “Nothing. He’s fresh.”

 _Shit._ “Then that bed’ll be empty again soon enough. Maybe go look outside for a while, Nat.”

A moment of silence, to honor the doomed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning for noncon. Skip to the next chapter for this chapter's summary.**

* * *

“You. Come here. Now.”

“Remove your clothes.”

“Damn, you’re cute like that. Smile. Good.”

“Hands behind your back.”

“Use your tongue.”

Months. Months of this. And it was only the beginning.

“C’mere. Hold still. Yeah, yeah, like that—yes— _yes_ —”

“Faster. I said, _faster_.”

“If I feel teeth one more time I’m gonna—”

“Quit screaming. …Much better.”

“Show us your face—oh, _look_ at you, you little slut—”

If only he’d fucking known.

Whatever front the Lemurian-Star Institute may have presented to Pierce and his mother, well. Impressive. Impeccable in its design. One cohesive, bulletproof façade. One massive lie.

It was all too perfect. That might have tipped him off in the beginning, but, no. This adorable, fir-covered forest of a plot of land, the neat rows of stately brick buildings, the fact that they’d only toured the front three surface levels before his mom and Pierce had said goodbye, left to fill out financing paperwork. They’d call that night, they’d said. However long ago that had been.

He hadn’t cared, hadn’t paid attention. Too obsessed with his master plan of saving himself from the fallout with—with someone. Someone he used to miss. He was pretty sure.

Too blind. Too stupid.

Back on that first night, after stumbling bemusedly into that cell block, he had hoped to make it maybe one week without a single person discovering his Curse. Ha. He’d maybe lasted forty minutes. The punishment for this failure began at forty-two.

And here he was, weeks—months? later, passed around from starving, half-crazed boy to girl to boy again, all twisted, sick studies in duplicity—silent acolytes by day, howling sadists by night. After the first day, after the shock wore off, he could barely bring himself to care about the humiliation, the physical sting, the nauseating unreality of it all.

These were children, really. All his age. Some having lived there for years, some for decades. How could he ever bring himself to blame them? Eighteen-year-old toddlers, at least in his cell block, all orphans missing their parents, their real lives, a sense of safety, the promise of a future, of a tomorrow. Manic zombies, turned on each other at the flick of a switch. Your best friend one day was your lunch the next.

Missing had to be highly literal here, as he could sense more of that fabled past slipping away each day, until it no longer occurred to him to waste energy pondering from where and whence he’d come.

It eventually became clear after a few months or so—or a year. Maybe. He’d long quit bothering trying to tell time.

But in they filed, just as he had, the hopeful bright young things that climaxed all too quickly and had no clue how to throw a punch, much less stage a crime scene to look like an entirely different incident had taken place. No matter. They would learn, or get cut down where they stood. Many learned.

The “professors” once inside the compound became brusque-speaking matrons who slapped or frowned given the performance made. Bucky learned how to shoot. How to kill and leave no trace, no body fluids, no stray scuff marks. How to lie. How to detect disbelief. How to infiltrate, how to invade. How to nudge history into its proper place, leaving no fingerprints behind.

That was the goal, of course. The new crux of his existence. HYDRA.

The ultimate goal HYDRA sought was none of his business; their means to reach that goal, the point of his existence. A tool needed not know, nor understand, its owner’s blueprints for the project it lived to help create.

Many students he could not tell apart from one another. All black-eyed, sickly pale things with darting tongues and a taste for blood, whether on a training course or in his cell. And oh did they adore him.

It was just something about the way he could move, they consoled him as he shrieked. How he writhed and twitched drove them wild. So responsive, so loud. Until the instant they preferred his silence.

The nights he could afford to cry himself to sleep stretched into endless days wherein the sun stood still, baking him into the concrete training ground. He twisted and stretched and lunged atop balance beams and wrestling rings, learned to snap necks, to feign his own death, only to disappear at the most opportune moment, before anyone of consequence could take note.

But once he abandoned his vained efforts to float, to survive, to make any kind of contact with outside—only then did his new life truly begin.

He could take the nightly torture in stride, could turn off his nerves and somehow make it through the ever-recurring nightmares the others inflicted on him him once they’d closed the doors for the night. He quickly approached the performance ranks of even those who had attended the longest, earning their chiding and their punishments and their taunts later on each night, often too sore to fathom sleep. But during the day he could rule. Some king of hell.

Physical prowess, top marks. Human psychological and physiological interpretation, top marks. Environmental hazard training, top marks. Marksmanship and weapons proficiency, top marks. Stealth and reconnaissance, nearly top marks.

One person ranked above him there—the redhead, her gaze clouded and dull until he accidentally made eye contact with her. Accidentally saw a cold gleam appear, for only a split-second.

_She knows._

That frustrating S&R imperfection stemmed from his inability to pass for an average member of the General Population. He could be quiet, could appear approachable, could feign charm or confidence should the need arise. But there was always a hitch, a misstep, a pang of guilt that burned all too clearly in his expression, marking him a traitor, or worse.

Sure, she could mask herself as ethereal, a mysterious lynx wrapped in pure schmuck bait, required to wait only hours before she could lay the necessary traps and finish her missions in a clean and quiet manner. But unlike him, she could pass for someone relatable. She had that control over her own vulnerability, could slice away the dead parts of herself so that stronger tissue could push through. She could kill another student in her Trials and exhibit remorse, and the matrons would refrain from scolding.

She had that _empathy_ he only now realized he craved.

One day after a particularly harrowing early morning in his dorm, she had found him. Which had required her to sneak up on him without him detecting. _Christ, she’s good._

“Hey, sailor.”

He could only gape in fury. Letting someone catch him off guard half so well would potentially ruin a mission, an operation. Would render his existence useless, a failure. A broken tool.

“Leave me alone.”

Amazing, really, that she’d sought him out. Was he close to approaching her test scores? Was she out for revenge? Did she want him, as the others pretended?

_Fuck—_

“Argh—well, hang in there,” she told him, backing away with a pained expression on her face. “Wait for Rumlow.”

And she was gone.

 _Great_. Who the hell was Rumlow?

Rumlow was a name, he could guess. A name meant a person—a matron, or maybe a student. The redhead had a name, not that he knew it. She had a number, up on the rankings board. She did he.

Was he supposed to have a name? If so, he could not remember it for the life of him. He knew his number, could respond when the others said certain words, looked his way, threw things at him, grabbed him. He knew his place. A name was an extra meaningless layer, one more grip they could—would—use to hold him down.

Well, wait he could. He could wait anywhere. He waited while walking the perimeter, waited while gazing hopelessly at the line of trees beyond the electrified fence, waited while crying once again. He was multitasking.

It was another of those particularly harrowing nights, when the nearly-nineteens in his dorm had grown sick of his gymnastics scores topping theirs or his marksmanship performance graded higher than theirs. Sharp fingertips all over him, squeezing him, bruising him, pushing into him, their teeth drawing blood, and he was all too happy to comply with their sneering demands. Might as well have been, for all intents and—

“Drop him.”

The black silhouette cutting off the horrid halogen hallway lights was not particularly tall, nor slight, no broad. Well-defined muscles, sure, but that he held in common with every vile soul in that room. Short hair, largely buzzed away. Square face. Wide, expressive eyes.

The others needed not be told twice. He processed himself hitting the floor—not that he could feel pain, not after he’d spent so long in the Red Room—and found it in himself to stand. Naked, bleeding, glistening in sweat and tears and come and blood, his cock half-hard against his will.

“Follow me.”

Out into the hallway, past the steel doors to the cells with the younger age groups, out into the night.

It was amazing, really, the feel of grass against his bare feet, the cool wind (southeastern, eight miles per hour, mid-summer?) coating an entire side of his scarred body, the stars taking in their view of him as he trudged along behind that silhouette.

In time they entered the final brick building, the last in the row. Smaller, with central air-conditioning. Wood-paneled flooring, early nineties at the time of its construction, spoke the faux graining.

“You need to vomit. Do it.” He had been ushered into a bathroom. One pristine commode in a small room, rather than several in stark rows, like in the cell blocks. A private room. 

He did so, until his stomach had emptied and only acid remained.

“Take five minutes to breathe. Focus on lowering your heart rate.”

He took deep, steady breaths. In, out, in and out. This was nice. He was getting a motherfucking vacation. His first ever. Maybe his last.

“Brush your teeth.” The silhouette, now vaguely brown of eye, instructed. He held out a blue toothbrush and an unsealed tube of toothpaste. “Clean out your throat.”

“Take a shower,” was the next command. The shower stall was enormous, nearly two feet in diameter, and his own. No other boys to comment on the water temperature, or how he looked with his shaggy hair damp. “Wash your hair. Don’t get any soap in your eyes.”

And afterward, “Tell me your name.”

He opened his mouth. Name, he knew what that meant. Did he have one? He reached for it. Dug around in there. Found nothing.

“He’s bleached it out,” the redhead deadpanned from the other side of the room, hunched over a laptop. “Give him a break.”

He hadn’t noticed her at all, he realized with another burst of shame. How long had she been there, watching from a not particularly well-hidden corner? God, he was losing it. Breaking.

“Bleached it out?” The silhouette raised his eyebrows, throwing another curious glance his way. “How?”

“We have our ways,” she muttered. “We protect what matters most to us, by disconnecting ourselves from it.” He decided then that her voice was the most fantastic thing to have ever reached his ears, thick and low and gravelly and abrupt, its cadence jolting. “We keep it from becoming a target.”

The silhouette continued to look him over. Something flashed in those rich eyes as they scanned every inch of his newly-cleaned form. Intrigue? Pity? Disgust? Or was he aroused? Unreadable, that look. Impressively unreadable.

“Tell me how you’re feeling.”

“Curious,” he replied honesty. “I want to know where I am. Who you are. What’s happening. And my left thigh stings.”

“Honors lodge,” the silhouette answered, his lip curling ever so slightly. “I’m Brock Rumlow. Nat over there put in your application to join us. Your leg’s still bleeding from a bite mark. Lie down on the bed.”

He did as told, bracing himself for the worst.

But Rumlow instead began gently wrapping his thigh in what felt like a bandage. Said nothing to him, pushed nothing into him, rubbed nothing onto him except antibiotic cream, by the sting of it.

Much better. Afterward he sat up, gazing about the small room. One desk, one chair, the wide bed, a hamper. A closet. Two doors, one he'd entered through and the other leading to that little bathroom. One window.

“No casualties reported from the depot explosion in Sofia yesterday,” the redhead murmured from the desk, hunched over the—he inhaled sharply. _Laptop._

 _Forbidden_. For some reason the sight of a different one, with pro athlete stickers on its lid, flashed through his mind. Disappeared just as quickly.

“That’s allowed here?” he asked, nodding at the humming machine. An older model, he knew. _IBM ThinkPad, 2006, non-standard battery pack._ From his brief glimpse at the screen, Nat appeared to be hand-coding a dummy VPN in one window and browsing the BBC News website in another.

“It’s a privilege,” she replied, grinning as she snapped it shut. “Passed down from the last person to _graduate_. Who knows how long I’ll be able to keep it?”

He blinked, not sure what to say. By then Rumlow had pulled a clean uniform from the narrow closet. “Hold your arms up. Step into these...there you go.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, something warm and nostalgic growing at the pit of his stomach. No. _No. No memories._ He banished those. He banished the warmth.

“No problem, uh—wait, you seriously don’t know your name?” Rumlow collapsed back onto the bed and kicked off his boots.

He realized he had begun to cry. “N-no. Don’t—I don’t have—”

“Only, you do. Like he said, he’s Brock Rumlow. I’m Natalia Alianovna Romanoff, or Nat. And you also have three-plus names, according to your MySpace.”

_MySpace._

The Past. Not the gray void, not the one into which he usually found himself staring, miserably, then numbly. This was the other void, the other side of that tunnel, the one that burned his eyes if he looked for too long in its general direction.

MySpace. Bulletins. Messages—

_“Steve—”_

He’d begun to tremble, his own shaking voice signaled to him.

The redhead shot him an amused look. “That name’s not any of yours. But you could talk about whoever’s named Steve, if you want to.”

What was there to talk about? The straw-colored hair flashing through his vision, the shining blue eyes, the jarringly deep voice, murmuring words he could not quite make out—what else was there? He could not say.

“I miss him?”

Well, didn’t he? His words had felt correct, even if they meant nothing to him.

Rumlow nodded, collapsing into a worn armchair. “So you've got someone. Well, all I can recommend is to get on your knees every night and pray that your Steve is okay out there.”

And he did, from that moment on. Before their sleep cycle, before climbing into that creaking bed in between Rumlow and Nat, he got on his knees and prayed for the health and safety of some little punk with one name and no face.

* * *

“Nervous?”

Steve winced. Nervous was a word, just not quite the right one for the situation. “Eh. I guess. The worst they can say is, no, maybe get better and apply again in two months.” Kind of a white lie. They could tell him to give up. To quit wasting everyone’s time, including his own. Or else.

“Two months,” the brunette next to him chuckled, clearly not buying it.

“Yeah. The first time they weren’t thrilled ‘cause I wasn’t fit enough, so I ate an entire bunch of bananas and swam laps every day. When I applied again it turned out I had pneumonia at the time, so, yeah, no. And _then_ it was because of the asthma. They were also mad I wasn’t eighteen yet.”

“And you’re still applying,” she breathed. British accent. Rich, deep voice.

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Every two months until either they enlist me, or I die.”

He’d sat up all night praying that this one would finally be it. That he could go ahead and get his life started instead of tooling around Brooklyn with no purpose, no plan. No friend.

But he couldn’t find his damn rosary anywhere. Not in its place under his bed, not in any of his laundry, not in any of his aunt’s cleanup piles for charity. An ill omen, he’d feared, until he remembered that his aunt told him omens were the stuff of heathen bullshit. Irish Catholic through and through. God, he missed her.

“Why so hell-bent on throwing yourself into the fight?”

How many times he’d been asked that precise question. “There’s so much pain out there,” Steve’s mouth quirked as the words in his head overwhelmed his throat and tongue. “People who wanna hurt other people, ones they’ve never met. And we hate them for it, want to hurt them back. I wanna get out there, maybe see if there’s a way we can be smarter about it. So we can quit punishing hundreds of thousands of civilians for the actions of the few. So I can keep the people I care about safe.”

The brunette whistled. “Is there someone in particular you’d like to protect?”

Steve felt the blood rush to his face but stayed his course. “Yeah. But not just him. I want—I want to get our job done, finish our occupation. End that cycle of hatred and let people be free to live their lives. We’re trapping half the world in their own homes and calling it safety.” His voice broke at that last part. God. "For as long as I can remember, I've just wanted to do what was right." Assuming he'd ever find out what exactly that was.

She grinned. “That’s an awful bloody lot for one person to manage.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, laughing a little. “It sure feels like it. But I can’t be the only one who feels this way…am I?”

“Oh, you’re not alone. It’s only a matter of yelling loud enough for your allies to hear you. Even before they know you’re their ally.” Her smile held the eerie serenity of one who knew exactly what she professed.

Huh. He’d never thought about it that way. “Dunno if I’m much of a yeller, but I’ll be happy with any allies I can get.”

“You never know whether someone’s a yeller,” she eventually mused aloud, “until right when the first grenade gets thrown.” She laughed through her nose. “Don’t know how many times my mother told me that, bless her.”

Steve watched numbly as the lady pulled out a deep brass-colored tube, held it up to her mouth, and applied its blood-red contents to her lips in two alarmingly smooth strokes, somehow capturing the precise mathematical curvature of her cupid’s bow in the second. Hopefully something long-practiced, after years of trial and error. If he’d had half that hand-eye coordination he’d have totally been enlisted already.

“Well.” She crossed one leg over the other. “Best of luck to the both of us.”

“I hear that.” Steve inhaled slowly and leaned back into his waiting room seat. “Any family in the military?”

“Everyone I can name.” She gave a languid smile, her deep red lips curving in pure confidence. “With my lineage and West Point transcript, they’d be irresponsible not to let me in.”

“No kidding?” _West Point_. It was the closest Steve had ever come to envy. “Well, I’m not wishing you any luck, then.”

“I appreciate it.” She extended one hand. “Margaret Carter, but you’re going to call me Peggy.”

“Hiya, Peggy. Steve Rogers.” Holy shit. He’d just said words to a lady, in real life. Lots of them. Holy—

“A pleasure.”

He shook his head. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

“Now let’s hope they call me up before they call you.”

Steve blinked. “What? …why?”

She gave a self-assured smile with those burgundy lips, rising to her high-heeled feet once the number one-twenty-two rang from the loudspeaker. “You’ll find out.”

And then the waiting room became agony. One less person to distract him from his own head.

For the ten hundredth millionth time he imagined how differently this would have gone, had Bucky still been around. Had he come along for moral support. Sure, Bucky had made it clear that he hated the thought of Steve leaving, but that had never stopped him from tagging along during any of Steve’s other perilous undertakings before.

But then Bucky had left.

Steve ground his teeth, feeling his eyes sting. How. _How_ had that happened? Here one day, gone the next, not even a goodbye, and—god. He missed that jerk. Off to a small college, Bucky’s mom had told him, once he’d rushed over to find out why Bucky hadn’t shown up outside his school the next day.

“Not to worry,” she’d assured him, clutching a blanket tightly around her shaking frame. “Saying goodbye to you was rough on him, don’t I know it, but it’ll only be for a day or two. He’ll call you once he’s settled. I don’t doubt that one bit.”

_His goodbye?_

That was the troublesome thing. If she’d only refrained from making that little sentence, Steve could chalk the radio silence up to some mental thing of Bucky’s. That Bucky couldn’t bring himself to just text Steve out of the blue, perhaps, not after so much time had elapsed. That posting anything on his MySpace could have let him slip up, so of course Bucky’d had to deactivate it. That Bucky had worried how maybe Steve would be too upset at his sudden move to—to forgive him—?

 _No._ No way. Bucky knew better. Steve swore to himself that Bucky knew better.

But his mom had mentioned a a goodbye, one Steve swore he could not recall. The inconsistency was maddening, and it hurt.

So was walking back to the Barnes’ house a few weeks later to find it vacant. No furniture, no tenants. No Bucky, having returned home for winter vacation, pacing about until Steve inevitably showed up and screamed at him until they gave into each other, making up for lost time.

Nothing.

And now he was here, alone, in this gray waiting room with rattling window AC units, the asbestos in the ceiling probably sucking yet another year out of his meager lifespan.

 _One thirty-seven_ , the loudspeaker finally blared. Steve leapt into the fucking air and hopped over to the interview booth.

“Rogers, is ’t?” The scientist looked awfully like Stanley Tucci, even under a cloud of silver hair and a thick German accent. That Bucky had forced Steve to watch _The Devil Wears Prada_ awaited its very own, inevitable reckoning.

“Sir.”

Truth be told, he’d never actually made it as far as the psych eval before. Usually his shoddy paperwork ousted him first, or the evidence that he’d forged his ID, or that he’d shown up on a multi-failure radar of some sort. To say nothing of his health records.

But Erskine seemed to like him. And so Rogers put all of his weight into that.

“I just don’t like bullies, sir,” he replied to the ninth question, the EKG monitor on his fingers steady and smooth. “Been fighting ‘em ever since I could walk. Figured this was my chance to do more damage to the worse ones out there.” At least his past failures had made great lessons in how not to market himself to these people.

Erskine scrutinized him through clouded irises. “I daresay I believe it, young man. Please wait here while I submit your forms to the higher-ups.” He pat Steve’s knee once before stepping out.

The _You Must Be of Age to Enlist_ sign seemed to taunt him as he sat there, alone. Well, the joke was on it. _I’m eighteen as of eight hours ago, jackass. Fight me._

But Erskine was taking an awfully long time to return. An hour seemed to pass, and Steve wondered idly whether jumping out of the booth and running for the hills would be of slightly better merit when Erskine finally ducked back in.

“Technically, there’s no way we could allow someone with your state of health in,” he began, his eyes twinkling. “Technically, I should send you home and request a medical checkup. Soon.”

“But,” Steve continued for him.

“But,” Erskine laughed. “We have a proposition we’d like to make to you.”

He was in the _fucking_ army, a voice inside his head laughed. Not his own voice; Bucky’s.

_I made it, Buck. They want me. Even if you don't anymore._

“I’m listening,” Steve answered, feigning a smile for the sweet old scientist.

And that was how Stephen Grant Rogers got roped into the most lauded military bio-eng prototype experiment of all time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rumlow is a lot younger in this AU. He'd look about like [this](https://31.media.tumblr.com/a6f3518867de011ec325b519f7638813/tumblr_inline_nlygghSOhM1sva092.gif)!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter's summary:  
> Barnes learns all too quickly that the Institute is, in fact, a mere front. What lies beneath is the Red Room Program—a brutal conditioning ground for the would-be agents of an entity only known as HYDRA. The frequent cruel treatment he receives from the other students induces the loss of whichever memories he had considered most precious, including his own name. Rogers is reduced to a silhouette in his head he can only call 'Steve.'  
> Still, his ranking improves as time goes on. Eventually another student, Natalia Alianovna Romanoff, notices. She has him transferred to the Honors lodge, where she and the other top-ranking student, Brock Rumlow, enjoy limited internet access. Freed from the nightly torments of the other students, he now focuses wholeheartedly on his training.  
> In the meantime, Rogers is heartbroken by Barnes' sudden cutoff from all contact. The day he turns 18, Rogers joins the military. It's in the recruitment office where he meets Peggy Carter, an intelligent woman with an impressive military pedigree who takes a shining to him after discussing what drives him to the armed forces. In spite of his glaring health issues, Dr. Erskine clears him for "the most lauded military bio-eng prototype experiment of all time."  
>   
>  **Warning for brief graphic violence. Skip to the next chapter for this chapter's summary.**

Top marks in everything.

Astounding, really, how little that knowledge meant to him. How after all this time he'd worked so hard to progress, whether to spite the others or the matrons or, perhaps, himself, that knowing that he was on track to _graduate_ soon seemed to bounce off of his skin like so many soft raindrops.

Should he theoretically not have felt some sort of anticipation? For that much more freedom, for his return to the General Public? 

To await his orders. To stay silent, to feign contentment. To remain paranoid, haunted each second by HYDRA's less visible though nonetheless enduring grip.

Ugh.

He returned to the lodge that night to find Rumlow sitting against the side of the bed frame, his lean legs splayed out in front of him. Unconscious? Unconscious. _Holy shit._

“Hey,” he announced as he walked in. “Status?”

“Eh.” Rumlow cracked his necked, blinked twice. “Fatigued.” Sure sounded correct.

“C’mere.” He gave Rumlow his hand, pulled him up, and pushed him back down onto the bed. “You want?”

Rumlow watched him, those brown eyes as warm as they'd ever looked, before shaking his head. “I want to talk to you.”

 _Talk_. There was a concept. “About what.”

Rumlow’s mouth quirked. After several seconds he finally put his thoughts to words. “You know how long it’s been since you moved into Honors?”

He shook his head. Shrugged. “A month?”

Rumlow gazed up at him with that unreadable expression again. “Try again.”

“Four months?”

“What the hell, man.”

“I don’t know! I don’t keep track, remember?”

“Try _three years_.”

He sucked in a breath. That sounded just so—so off. Like it was larger than it should have been. Well, duh. But it shouldn’t have mattered to him, that discrepancy. He’d made a point of not caring.

So why was this revelation making his head spin?

Rumlow spoke again. “You still don’t remember anything from before?”

He sighed, flopping onto the bed and into the crook of Rumlow’s arm. “Not much. One kid. A lady, sometimes. Mostly a lot of text.”

“You must’ve liked reading.”

Somehow that didn’t sound entirely implausible. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Can’t think of any books? Any titles?”

He knew hundreds, maybe thousands of book titles, of central characters and themes, of which common plot threads became tropes oft anticipated by the average bystander even in real life, outside of those fun narratives. To some level, the events within books were critically important, if not always obvious in the depth of their reach. But by god would they theoretically help him maintain a perfect cover, the matrons had made clear to him. A cover he had finally proven he could deliver, as of his most recent ranking.

“None really stick out.”

“I have trouble believing that. Okay, how about the kid? You've gotta have remembered something by now.”

 _Steve._ He said the name aloud, and damn if his face didn’t flush, his body tightening in a way he could never ever understand. Muscle memory, sure, but was this something he should really donate his energy to exploring? "I loved him?"

Rumlow licked his lips before glancing back at him again. “Do you think he knew?”

“Not sure.” No words, no signals. Nothing. Just a little head of straw-colored hair, and a name. “Why d’you ask?”

“Because you were eighteen when you showed up, Barnes, almost four years ago.” _Barnes?_ “You must’ve had a family. Friends, like the kid you remember. Stuff you liked to do. You’ve been places, you’ve seen things. Usually the kids who show up here are born in prisons, or brought in while they’re still toddlers. No one knows anything outside of this place. Except you. And you threw it all away. _How?"_

 _Barnes_. Was that him?

Maybe it had been an instinctive thing, a subconscious process, a result of the trauma at the hands of the others back from days before the Honors lodge—that sour, gray year of his life that he’d never get back. His mind had overridden his Cursed body, perhaps. Had refused to give them anything more to play with.

Comforting, somehow. Well, yeah, horrifying. But if that theory were true, then he felt pretty fucking proud of himself.

He told Rumlow this.

“I’d believe it, you know, if you were the only case.”

He inhaled sharply. “There are others?”

“Fuck, Barnes. You live with one and a half.”

He abruptly sat up, looked upon Rumlow anew.

_Seriously?_

But he could find no trace of dishonesty in Rumlow’s expression, felt no changing in his pulse, noted the proper dilation of his pupils. “Then kiss me.”

Rumlow grinned, thin-lipped, his eyes glittering. Kept his head pressed against the pillow. Grinned and grinned and grinned.

“So you’re the—the half? The fuck does that even mean?!”

“I get a degree of interpretation beyond the typical level. Like…I could delay when I follow my orders.”

 _Fuck._ He’d begun to breathe heavily. When, he could not say.

Rumlow grabbed his knee. “Status?”

“The hell,” he breathed in response, feeling his arms beginning to spasm. This whole time—the fucking eternity he’d spent at this place, the somewhat shorter eternity wherein he’d found solace in returning to the lodge each night, sleeping next to these two, discussing internet articles with one and fucking the other until even the sound of Rumlow’s voice alone could bring him to climax—and yet—“I don’t believe it.”

“Your belief in it holds no weight with or against the validity of its existence.”

Ugh, how he hated when Rumlow got metaphysical. “For how long can you delay them?”

“Depends.”

“How long?”

“No matter what, there are some orders I can’t delay,” Rumlow murmured, scowling. “Like when the deadline is explicitly stated, or when there’s a narrow window of opportunity for a success. But others I can delay for months. Longest I ever went without the burning was eight. But I don’t have to follow the implicit commands immediately.”

Then Rumlow knew the fucking punishment-pain, too. _God damn it—_ “I’m so fucking stupid. Not figuring it out til now. Not—”

“I’m not that obvious. Like I just said, it’s not like I automatically have to—”

“Not about you.” Fuck, Rumlow could practically cheat his way out of the thing. But, Nat. _Four years_ , three of which he'd literally lived with her, and he'd not noticed at all?

Who was _that good?_

“She’s got it down to a science,” Rumlow whispered, shooting a glance out the corner of his eye toward the lodge’s one high window. “Everyone who’s ever abused hers, she’s murdered, or worse.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Didn’t mean it was easy. There’s a reason she’s stayed at the top for so long.”

Christ. He found himself sinking back down into the crook of Rumlow’s arm, until Rumlow flipped over and ground himself down onto him, finally carrying out his command from a few minutes ago. Once he arched himself up against Rumlow's hips, Rumlow grinned, slipping one lithe tongue into his mouth and exploring that soft heat. Chapped, tanned hands slid into his standard-issue gray slacks, kneading him into shape until he canted and writhed, bursts of laughter spluttering out between moans. God, it was good.

Yet it also felt slightly off—one ring out from the bullseye, a single missed test question. As though the true version—the director’s cut—existed out there, somewhere beyond the electrified fence, and Rumlow could only show him the haphazardly-filmed bootleg, its subtitles all in the wrong language.

But it was a hell of a lot better than nothing, and infinitely better than the mess those students had made of him in his first year. In any case, Rumlow’s cock was _fine_.

Nat found them that way hours later, nearly kicking the door down in an alarmingly visible fury. She barely glanced at their naked forms atop the bed, said nothing as she flipped the laptop open and threw her shirt into their plastic hamper.

_She’s fought with Barton again._

Whoever that was.

“You want in?” Rumlow actually had the nerve to ask her.

But the look she shot him was surprisingly benign. Would she actually humor him, for once, in spite of her clearly foul mood? Rumlow sure knew how to pick times and places.

“Give me two hours.”

An order. He weakly looked up at Rumlow’s expression, wondering what he’d have to make of that. Suppose two hours passed, and Nat still had work to do?

But he would never find out. “Time’s up,” Rumlow chimed precisely two hours later (Had he counted the seconds? Or had his burning begun?). He kissed his— _Barnes_ , Rumlow had slipped out, had called him—Barnes’ neck and slipped one hand between his legs from behind, lightly dragging his nails across that maddeningly sensitive vein on the underside of his cock. Barnes—God, that was weird, a fucking name—felt humming build up from the scant stretches of Rumlow’s skin that contacted his, felt it pool into his core and erupt from his throat as an exultant mewl, not quite a moan and not quite a yelp.

Nat chuckled, snapping the ThinkPad shut, and unzipped her boots. “I want the middle.”

“All yours,” they replied in unison, parting to make room for her.

* * *

Once the needles had retracted, once the pain had receded, once the world had ceased its out-of-control spinning, Steve felt _great._

Too great. The resulting boost in his strength, his endurance, his sensory perception, his fucking height, had lent his demeanor an eagerness that he hoped his old self would not have displayed at the prospect of his assigned tasks over the next few years.

Protecting his squadmates he more was cool with. Taking out local insurrectionists, yeah, okay. Snatching live grenades and lobbing them into the sky, holding his shield over his buddies to protect them from the ensuing blast, yup, all good.

Pointing weapons at civilians, though. People who had merrily offered him and the other commandos hot tea the day before.

Making the fucking propaganda speeches. He wouldn’t sleep too well the nights after any of those.

Spending hours on end in some of the most expensively designed bases on the planet, guarding _oil rigs_.

No. What. How.

 _How_ had this happened?

Not just to him, but to—to them, to that faceless populace that had lived inside his head, asking him for help if not in so many words for all those long years before—

 _This_ is what they’d asked of him?

A dancing monkey, his brain bleached and his will locked down, a mindless machine?

No, no, machine was hardly accurate here. He was a blunt object, a tool of the non-powered variety. Super-powered, sure, but hardly complex in structure or implementation. He was there to grease this—this _operation_ , to make it that run much smoother, so the industry captains could sleep that much easier at night.

And yet again he found himself drifting off, into another reality, an amazing one, where against all odds Bucky had come along with him. Had joined their group of commandos. Had put his impressive Trig grades to use with a sniper rifle. Had fought alongside him, just like old times.

God, that would have made everything all worth it.

So maybe it was for the best that he hadn’t heard from Bucky in years. That he'd had no one to blind him from the ugly truth of the matter. No one to help him sleep at night.

And so he’d lain awake, incessantly, for who knew how many days in a row this time. The Vita-Rays had increased his stamina, sure, but even that had its limits.

“You’ve got to recharge at some point, Rogers,” Carter barked as she strode into the room, the stripes on her suit glinting. “Captain Zombie. Send that one up to marketing.” Her British accent rendered the jeer that much sharper.

“Ha, ha.” Steve pressed his fingertips to his closed eyelids. “Any new assignments?”

“For the time being, no. But Phillips can tell you’re getting itchy. I’d be wary if I were you.”

“I am wary,” he grumbled. “You’re the one here telling me to take a nap.”

“Morita pegged you in the back of the head earlier with a goddamn MRE.”

“And it fucking hurt. For ten seconds. You going somewhere with this?”

But she totally was. Carter never started out with seemingly unrelated assertions or factoids unless she absolutely had a statement to make, wrapping all of the threads neatly together with a steel wire. She was nearly as efficient as she was pragmatic.

“Wary implies an ability to dodge a bloody MRE to the back of the head. Particularly when the assailant _calls his attack beforehand._ ”

 _Assailant_. “He was just fooling around.” Not that it had been any less humiliating. Morita had gotten him good.

“Which is why you’re still in one piece. That shit-stirrer who’s been firing rockets at the base all morning? His throwing arm needn’t be any weaker than Morita’s. And there are piles of grenades in that compound larger than our stores of MREs.”

“You think I let him hit me because I wasn’t paying attention,” Steve moaned, feeling like she’d ripped out his heart and run over it a few times with their Humvee.

“You weren't paying attention. At all. I don't think it; I know it.”

“Well, uh, joke’s on you. I knew he was gonna do that. Let him have it—uh, morale booster.”

Carter leered. “You’re a shit liar, Rogers.”

Well, that much was true. Steve sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. Okay, so maybe his vision had begun to blur a little over the past twenty hours. And maybe his ears had been ringing nonstop ever since their push that morning. And maybe Peggy was absolutely fucking right, as usual.

“Steve.”

“I hear ya. I’ll—uh. Get some shut-eye. For a few hours. Not sure how.”

Carter blinked. “You’re having trouble falling asleep.”

“Falling, staying.” The corners of his lips quirked upward. “It’s like this place is closing in on me. Can’t settle my brain down.”

“You’ve got to talk to someone. America’s favorite captain needs to stay in fighting condition.”

“ _He_ definitely does,” Steve conceded, grinning joylessly. “God forbid the brass finds out he’s got a double-life.” An alter-ego, more like.

And she sat down on the cot next to him, folding one leg smartly over the other. “Double-life or no, this can’t go on. It’s only a matter of time before you become a liability. Phillips could call in a therapist, get Erskine to check for, oh, something in the Vita-Rays that could have—”

Steve shook his head. “They’re not gonna find anything wrong, Peg. Not in here. It’s this—place, this assignment. All of them. We’ve had this talk before.”

And they had. Many late nights, in the best secrecy they could muster, trading hushed complaints over a pack of cigarettes or a fifth of bourbon. Peggy knew something was wrong.

Which was why her reply hardly surprised him.

“If you're genuinely ready to drop all of this, Steve, then you needn't waste any time. I could help you. As I said—liability. Phillips doesn’t need a fiasco on his hands. He was reluctant enough to bring you out here in the first place; sending you home could bring him peace of mind.”

“And then what the hell would I do?” Steve hissed, surprised at the tightness of his own voice. The words had come out far harsher than he’d intended. “This was what I’ve wanted my whole life, Peg. I need to follow through—finish what I started. I can’t go home until we’ve eased the tension here, and that’s not happening any time soon. The rate we’re hurting people here over—over _oil_ —it’s just a matter of time, before—”

“Before the economy dips slightly, as more OPEC shenanigans artificially deflate petrol pricing,” Carter deadpanned. “Either your heart's in it or it's not, Rogers. But don’t pretend this is what you signed up for.”

“This isn’t about me, Peg. I should trust the brass, help them out as much as I can. They have the big picture. We have our orders, and we should follow them. I’m just their—”

“What is this, a bloody Whedon script? Can it, Rogers. Don’t make me regret recommending you for the Vita-Ray experiment.”

Steve sucked in a breath. “I knew it.”

“Remember that little thing that disobeyed the rules, followed his heart, and risked fines or worse—all because he wanted to make the world a better place? Where everyone could be free, where the one you loved could be safe? Remember him, Rogers?”

_Peggy—_

“I loved that little boy, Steve," she continued. "It was his line of thinking that’s been keeping me sane through all of this, til now. I know how ridiculous the past few tours have been. The position the government’s put us in. I _know_.”

“But Peg—”  


“So to hear him now, pleading for me to let him sustain what’s clearly a downward spiral into—”

“What am I supposed to do, Peg?!” he finally croaked. “The action’s here, the fighting’s out here, and if I don’t stay here—”

“It doesn’t _have to be_ , Steve,” she intoned, stressing each word through her teeth. “You could bring the action home. You know what you want to fight for, deep down in that overgrown ribcage somewhere. You _know_ this mess out here is a zero-sum game. So attack from a different angle."

He swallowed, finally putting two and two together. “Peg, you’re getting out?”

She nodded brusquely. “You could put it that way. I like to think of it as reentering the house from a side door—one they’ll not think to lock.”

His jaw dropped. That was it. This was it. A way out—a sudden light springing to existence, disrupting the gray void of his life and revealing it to be a tunnel, one with an exit.

“I might need time,” he whispered. “And help. You think any of the boys would—?”

“Be willing to follow you to the ends of the earth and back?” Peggy cut in with a smile. “Including away from the battlefield? Yes, Rogers. If you can sell it.”

“My heart wasn’t in this whole mess over here, and I still sold an entire country on the fucking Patriot Act,” he quipped, his heart pounding. But the thumping this time around was of a far more optimistic breed. “I think they’d be up for it.”

* * *

The next day, Trials were held. His— _Barnes’_ favorite. One less contemptuous figure from his nightmares to have to look at in days to come. One more empty bed in that old dorm, to be filled within the month with some poor soul who nonetheless held no rancid place in his memories.

“You,” the stone-faced matriarch called, pointing his way, “and you.”

_No. No. Nonononono—_

Rumlow knew better than to make a discernible reaction in front of her, but Barnes knew him too well. Could see the lightning behind those eyes. Could taste the acid in that mouth. It was a peculiar hurt, one desperate for a target and finding nothing with a heartbeat. Well, not quite yet.

And so they picked their weapons. Knives. Gerbers, MK II, one for each of them. Just as they'd always picked to practice, all those times over all those years.

_Why'd they make Rumlow wait so long? Why wait until I'm ready to graduate to pit the Honors against one another? Was he... fodder? For me?_

Made sense. Rumlow's comparatively weaker Curse would have rendered him a greater degree of potential trouble out in the General Public than, say, himself or Nat. _(Will I have to fight her next?)_

Barnes knew HYDRA liked to keep their _graduates_ even closer than their enemies.

But this still was undeniably cruel. And unfair. And awful.

“Begin.”

It was the sounds he would remember later, those swift swishes and the clanking of metal on metal and the occasional thud of fist against a parrying arm or knee. Images, not so much. Blurs, all of it.

Rumlow was tough to nail down even while standing still; highly-tanned Caucasian skin, or a sun-starved Mediterranean iteration? Black hair, or dark brown? And were those flecks of gray more than just a trick of sunlight? Barnes could generally gauge others’ clothing sizes from a glance, even at a distance, but Rumlow's had proved elusive. It seemed to vary day by day, hour by hour. Whether he looked broader or more slight had remained inconsistent even in recurring levels of darkness or ambient lighting.

But all that mattered now was his perfect array of inconveniently-timed jabs and slashes and feints and the occasional punch. Occasional, and sporadic. No patterns became clear, nor did Barnes expect any to do so. Rumlow was good. The tragedy was that so too was he.

Some blood had been drawn, sure. He’d have horrid bruises popping up within the next few minutes. At this rate, though, they could potentially go on for hours. Maybe a day. In time he could sense the Trial matriarch growing bored, even through his focus on his own fighting.

They both abruptly looked up as she sighed. “Finish him.”

She had spoken to Rumlow.

First of all, _thank Christ in hell_ she had spoken to Rumlow. Barnes would wonder forever after whether she’d _known_ , whether this had been her plan all along. Or whether someone up there maybe just hated him a little less in that instant.

Second, Rumlow had listened. Had struck. Had removed his filters, his inhibitions, his own nerves. The thin knife became a machete, a cleaver, something with far more severing power than a Gerber ever should have possessed.

Because the third thing was that Barnes’ entire left side became a mass of red, red pain, white-hot and spurting in every direction. He lost balance, hit the concrete ground with a splat, felt the blood pooling into his hair and the folds of his uniform, watched it trickle toward the matriarch's feet.

And the fourth thing was that a black silhouette—a loping beast of a shadow—zipped past the matriarch, vaulted over the electrified fence ( _how_ , he would ask himself even years later), and blended into the darkness engulfing that mysterious space beyond the closest fir trees.

The fifth thing was that Barnes had suddenly remembered how to cry. Or his body had, even if his mind had not yet processed what exactly had happened. But he was crying, weeping, sobbing as two of the bowtie-clad medical scientists approached him with a stretcher. Not from that sanguine loss of limb, no, but for the colorless loss of a person who had made his life worth living in this sick place, who had brought it close to something enjoyable. Who had listened to him, who had told him to _talk._

It felt familiar, this brand of grief—as though his body had gone through the same motions before, in another life.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter's summary:  
> Finally reaching top marks in all training grounds, he is surprised to learn that he has been in the Red Room for over 4 years. In this time he has grown close to Rumlow, who informs him that Nat shares his Curse. Rumlow feels similar effects as well, but to a lesser degree, not requiring him to comply with commands immediately.  
> Having risen rapidly through the ranks in the Army, Captain Rogers now commands the squad guarding an oil rig in the Middle East. While his merit as a soldier and strategist have earned him great praise, he is realizing that most of his work amounts to nothing, particularly in terms of protecting civilians. He is disgusted by the true nature of what is asked of him in this warzone. Peggy shares the sentiment; sensing that he is falling apart at the seams, she offers that the two of them leave the military and find different, more effective ways to make the world a better place.  
> In a brutal training bout, an Institute Matron orders Rumlow to finish Barnes; instead, Rumlow severs Barnes' left arm before managing to climb over the Institute's electrified fence to freedom. Preemptively grieving Rumlow, he passes out from blood loss.

* * *

_James Buchanan Barnes,_ a cool drawl asserted, _you are to be the new fist of HYDRA._

He woke several hours later, eerily free from pain, and a whole lot more sensitive to—

_Air temperature, 71 degree Fahrenheit but climbing—close to eight hundred feet above sea level—drafts from three overhead vents and one floor-mounted unit—human presence 15 yards away through two closed doors, someone in the medical field, the other a school officer—the Red Room’s Trial matriarch—_

How he desired to vomit. That painless stretch of void had been positively wonderful compared with his conscious hours in this hellish place. That had been the real fucking vacation, dreamless sleep.

And now he was back. Well, most of him.

In time more scientists filed in, manhandling him as they pressure-checked the new arm, finding nothing awry. They scrubbed him, checked his temperature in four different places, removed his IVs and then manacles. _Manacles._ How long had those been on? He had not noticed.

They briefed him on its new capabilities, its durability, and where along his nervous system its many sensors would electronically transmit sensory data. It was an impressive system, he could admit. The arm itself, from the portions of it he could view, possessed its own brand of cold beauty.

And he remembered Rumlow.

_Fuck—_

One of the machines plugged into the arm began beeping rapidly. “Heart rate is spiking—someone calm him—why the hell—?”

Barnes shook his head and leaned back against the chair, taking deep breaths. Gradually the beeping slowed, then silenced. “It won’t happen again,” he rasped.

_Not now. Not now. Grieve later. Get out of here first._

The scientists nodded, unplugging the monitors from the ports inside the crook of his elbow. The matriarch crossed her arms. “That remains to be seen. In the meantime, you will spend the rest of today in the lodge, and not attend your training sessions. Dismissed.”

Immediately he stood up and began striding toward what he guessed would be the quickest route to his and Nat’s and—ugh— _formerly_ Rumlow’s room.

Nat had clearly been waiting for him, seated cross-legged in the lone desk chair with an unreadable look on her face. He snapped the door shut behind him before crumpling onto the floor, his knees suddenly too weak to support the rest of him.

“He made it out, Barnes,” Nat told him. More than a hint of pride glinted in her steely smile. “Neither STRIKE nor SHIELD have found him yet. It’s been nearly a week.” 

“I want him _back,_ ” he moaned, his eyes spilling over.

Nat sniffed. Some lower-level processing algorithm inside him noted how strange that was. How deeply fucked up this whole mess was, to elicit that level of emotional response from Nat. Indeed, she’d known Rumlow first, likely for way longer. Had been the closest to him for who knew how long. “So do I,” she eventually croaked.

Barnes rolled back until the nape of his neck found the paneled wall. _Contain yourself,_ he tried commanding. If only the motherfucking Curse would let him follow his own commands.

There was a thought. If Rumlow had not been lying, then Nat too was in his position. He could command her to find him, to bring him back. Could invite her punishment well into the next decade. He actually pursed his lips before mentally punching himself for it.

That would be cruel to both of them. There had been plenty of runaways before, yeah, but always the STRIKE or SHIELD student squads were sent out to collect any would-be escapees. They always returned within days, if not hours, encouraged by promises of special treatment or rewards. A few times Barnes himself had been a reward, dragged straight from the classroom and into what had felt like a spiked pit, a cluster of twitching hands reaching from its depths. Reaching for him, groping him, clawing him to shreds. He shuddered, struggling to bury those particular memories back down into the pit where they belonged—

“Nice prosthetic, by the way.”

_Good._ Something to distract him. “I kinda like it,” he admitted.

Nat beamed. Huh. “Silver’s a good color on you.”

“I think it’s some kind of titanium alloy. They said it was waterproof…three-hundred foot depth.”

“Useful.” She slowly crept up to him. “Could I look at the joint?”

He loved her for asking. “Absolutely.”

She unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his head as he raised his arms, then ran her cool fingertips over the jagged seam where metal met flesh. It tickled, a minefield of sensation that fed him entirely too much information, while nanosecond-sized gaps in that stream left him startled. “That feels good.”

Nat laughed under her breath before tracing her hands down toward his sectioned bicep. “You feel this?”

“Your extremities are clocking in at ninety-six degrees,” he spat out as his brain processed the arm’s sensory data. “Your blood glucose level is below seventy. Maybe you should eat something.”

“Thanks.” She reached her free hand under the lone mattress and pulled out a steel shoebox-sized capsule. He inhaled sharply, not having seen that in the entire time he’d stayed here. “Emergency stash,” she laughed at his startled face. “Dinner’s not for three more hours.”

Huh. “You got anything else in there?”

“A few more sealed protein bars, a knife from the training room, seven hundred and twenty-six United States Dollars, an unlocked Nokia 3250 and charging cable, two water bottles. Some hair ties.” She grinned. “Five packs of Hubba Bubba Max in _outrageous original_ flavor, unopened.”

_What._ “Where’d you get all that stuff? Besides the protein bars and the knife.”

“I know how to break into the holding area for all the incoming students' personal items. No security, since they take out all the electronics or cash they find first. Whenever a student dies, the admins either sell their stuff or destroy it, if anything could be incriminating.”

He sucked in a breath. “Then d’you think anything I brought would still be there?”

Nat grinned. “I can find out. How long do you think you can wait here?”

“I’ve been instructed to spend the rest of the day in the lodge,” he replied, a familiar heat sprouting in his chest. Maybe, just maybe, he could learn something about his past life, about where he’d come from, about that little punk in his head named Steve. For so long, Barnes had felt a sharp sting whenever the notion of digging up those memories had arisen. But with the revelation of Nat’s skills, of her offer, perhaps even that pain could be worth ignoring.

In any case, he owed it to Rumlow.

“Good. I’ll be back before you know it.” And she was gone, the empty foil wrapper fluttering to the floor as her footsteps faded away.

* * *

“Welcome home, man.” 

Steve grinned, touched at the site of his new roommate holding out a fat blue-frosted cupcake. “You didn’t have to. I appreciate it.” 

“True,” the immaculately-trimmed man laughed, “but I also didn’t have to give Captain America my spare room. Could’ve saved it for some loser, or a lovely lady. Guess it’s just in my nature to take one for the team.” 

Peggy snickered. “One could saw this one’s charm off in chunks and export it.” 

Steve clasped hands with his new landlord, a man in his late twenties named Samuel Wilson, whose immediate past sounded awfully similar to his own. 

“Two tours,” Sam later mused over the six-pack they’d split between the three of them. “I’d planned on at least four or five, yeah. Cool program—wish I could talk more about it, but you know how it goes. Prototype stealth flight tech, and made some buddies I’d be more than happy to take a bullet for.” He wrinkled his nose. “Only, one of them jumped before I did.” 

“Sorry to hear that,” Steve whispered, giving Sam’s shoulder a squeeze. Losing someone so close as a squadmate—on the field, no less—was its own special slice of hell. 

Sam sniffed, giving a joyless grin. “Riley was a good guy. Reminded me a lot of the stories ‘bout you they kept spreading. Real hero, y’know. Maybe a bit rash. Hell of a field strategist, though, and a total sweetheart. Kids loved him…I know I did.” 

“That does sound familiar,” Peggy whispered in Steve’s ear. “Now he’d only need to add _melodramatic_ to the list, Captain.” Sam nearly spit out his beer. 

“How long’ve you been home?” Steve eventually asked. 

“Two years, now. With Riley gone…” Sam gave that heartbreaking smile again. “Couldn’t buy it any longer. My head was all over the place. Would’ve been, eh. What’d they say. A liability, to my squad, to my CO. I got reckless, got to fighting with my helmet off.” Steve and Peggy exchanged glances. “Thought leaving the warzone would be the worst decision ever—I mean, you know how it is. What the hell could I do back here, where it’s all quiet, where people got no clue? Heh.” 

“Does it still feel like that?” Steve asked, blinking. “Even now?” 

Sam downed the rest of his beer before shaking his head. “Nope. For a few months, I went to the VA here. Met some good people, had some really good chats. Not fun ones, nah. But they needed to happen. I’d be a completely different guy today if I hadn’t taken that plunge and gone to speak—gone to listen. Best decision I ever made.” 

Steve held a cursory knowledge of the Department of Veteran Affairs, but had never thought about dropping by to see what happened inside those halls. He had yet to truly feel like a Veteran—those hallowed, wizened souls with stories and visible struggles and occasional adjustment issues in the best of cases. Homeless and suicidal at worst. As though feeling this blessed, this lucky, prevented him from meriting true Vet status—Peggy was still alive and well, and he’d had decent back pay to live off of, and his body and mind were in perfect condition for job-searching. 

But not everyone was as lucky as him. 

“Sam, y’think I could come with? Next time you go down there?” 

“Sure, man. Only I don’t attend as a beneficiary anymore. Now I work there full-time.” 

Peggy’s eyebrows shot up. “That has to be difficult,” she breathed. “Seeing the worst of what happens over there brought home every day.” 

“You got that right. Some days are better than others, though. Sometimes I’m fighting the local branch’s council for budget allotment, and sometimes I’m helping an amputee fight against her own desire to kill herself. We don’t get nearly enough funding or resources for my liking. Keeps me busy.” 

And in that moment Steve honestly tried not to think of Bucky. Of the eleven times he'd given his friend a specific command, the nature of which had left Bucky screaming and crying until Steve could remove the knife or the pills or whatever loophole he'd figured out that time around, to coax him down and away from those thoughts, those plans. The eleven times he'd dropped everything and had run to his friend, instead of the other way around, as it usually passed.

But there were so many more people out there who needed those words, needed that extension of only a few hours just to make it to the next day.

Steve took a deep breath. “I want to help, Sam. Anything I could do for the VA, anything you can think of, just let me know. Please.” 

Sam shot him a cool glance, the corners of his mouth gradually curling upward. “Captain America himself, making a stand for the strugglers? Yeah, maybe I got a few ideas.” 

* * *

Peggy kissed Steve goodnight and gave Sam a quick hug before returning to her own new apartment. The whole day had been an enormous success, really—moving Steve’s two suitcases of possessions into the sparsely furnished spare room had taken no time at all, so spending the evening with Sam had been the sole itinerary bullet. All dessert, no cabbage.

To her surprise, her roommate Angie was still awake when she locked the front door behind her. “Heya, English. Fun night with the Captain?”

“Yes, actually,” Peggy chuckled. “You should come next time.”

“There’s a next time?” Angie breathed, her eyes sparkling. “Sign me up! Hey, y’not hungry, are ya?”

“I’m fine. Sam’s a fantastic chef, and we had a few beers.” She kicked off her heels and collapsed back onto the loveseat next to Angie. “How was your day?”

“Eh, you know. Same old same old. ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ I don’t plan on leaving my day job anytime soon.”

That Angie had to wait tables for a living irritated Peggy to no end. Her roommate had genuine talent when it came to acting, sure, but it was the research and effort she put into refining her craft that really deserved more attention and praise. Angie had paid her way through a performance art program at bloody Julliard, only for the recession to cut short both her parents’ jobs.

Supporting herself had been one thing, but Angie had been tasked with keeping all three of them afloat. No time to fly around the country to audition; Angie needed money, and quickly. Odd jobs, slinging hash, side projects like becoming an Uber driver and putting her spare room up on Air BnB. Peggy’s insistence on paying for over half their rent had finally freed up some of Angie’s time—at least, enough of it for her to begin auditioning once more. Peggy had made sure of it.

“They’ve got to pull their heads out of their arses at some point,” she murmured, nudging her head against Angie’s. “I’ve seen what you can do. You’re going to make it. One of these days.”

Angie laughed softly, resting her head on Peggy’s shoulder. “Glad someone out there has faith in me. My parents keep insisting I have a shot at making it into law school.”

There was a thought, Angie performing in a court room instead of on a stage. Peggy actually laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past you. But you need to do what you think is best. Find a career that will sit right with you, even years from now.”

Angie laughed through her nose. “At this point I’ll take anything I can get. What about you, English? Still thinking about the CIA?”

“More than thinking,” Peggy admitted, twisting her own split ends as she spoke.

The whole time Peggy had fought overseas, her competence seemed to spill forth without limit. She’d been in her zone, had been able to exude the confidence she felt within, had gotten up ten extra minutes early each morning to braid her hair and touch up her nails. She could command a board room with the same ease as she could a ragtag squad of misfit commandos, on the infrequent occasions Steve had to run ahead and make use of his super-form in place of a multi-man reconnaissance team.

But back here in the public sector, something felt amiss. It had become harder and harder to get out of bed, to put on makeup, to step out of the house. That fountain of poise had seemingly run dry.

Thank hell she’d picked a place with a roommate; had Peggy lived alone, she doubted that anything else could entice her to leave her room anymore.

“I have an interview scheduled this week,” she added. “The background check went through fine—”

“Of course it did! You got a damn Purple Heart out there, didn’t you?!”

“—so it’s just a matter of finding a place for me in there.” Peggy laughed. “And, yes, that little thing. Turns out the car headed straight for you keeps rolling even after you shoot the driver between the eyes.”

“You dumbass.” Angie kissed her temple. “Well, I’m gonna crash for the night. Still up for coffee at nine?”

“Absolutely.” Another perk of having Angie for a roommate was that Angie was her roommate.

“It’s a date.” Angie winked before heaving herself up off of the loveseat. “If anyone can make it into the fuckin’ CIA, English, it’s gonna be you. No doubt about it. Have some faith.”

As Angie’s bedroom door clicked shut, Peggy blew a silent kiss in her direction. _God bless this house._

* * *

Nat returned just after midnight, slipping through the window with a sturdy drab backpack in tow. Before Barnes could even process that she had returned, she had already packed into it her laptop, its charger, and the steel capsule from beneath the mattress. And a spare uniform set from the closet. _What…?_

Barnes had spent his time alone in the bathroom, looking at his reflection in the mirror flooded with an emotion he could not quite name. Not quite shock, nor fear, nor discomfort. But apparently his time spent unconscious in the med bay had been used for far more than just installing his prosthetic arm.

For starters, his muscle mass had increased significantly. Sure, he’d had a well-defined physique from his endless hours on the training grounds, but nothing even remotely so pumped as what the mirror portrayed. Firm abs, thicker thighs and upper arms, rounder calves, and several more inches of pure muscle added to his waistline. He’d even tried on Nat’s C-cup harness to find that it could just barely contain his inflated pecs. The sight of his own body had fucking aroused him. _Unreal._

And they’d painted a five-pointed red star on his metal deltoid. A familiar enough symbol—it had graced the Lemurian-Star Institute’s public face, its pamphlets, and the crest hanging over the fake entrance hall, a stark and unsettling call forward to the red, red misery that had lain before him all the while.

“Something up?” he asked as she rearranged the contents of her bag.

“We need to leave. Now.”

He instantly stood up, not that _need_ ever constituted an order. But given her speed and efficiency of motion, this was obviously important. He pulled on a shirt, struck numb as he processed what exactly she’d just said. _Leave._ Leave?

“How? Where would we go? What happened?”

“Can’t explain right now. I need to pull the tracker out of that arm. Spent the evening looking up the schematics. Lie back on the bed, now.”

“What—” But he knew better than to argue with her. Nat pushed him back onto the bed, pulling a set of thin metal tools from her uniform shirt, and went to work. He nearly caught himself praying that she’d not slip, trigger a signal, summon collection squads to their room—

_No._ Nat would never execute until she knew all of the situation’s variables. He had to have faith.

“Okay, done.” She placed the tiny black block on the floor near the hamper. “Now you’ll need to pull out mine.”

_What?_ “Where is it?”

“Same place, deep inside the bicep.” She pulled out bandages and a scalpel, and waved an empty syringe at him before returning it to the bag. “Local anesthetic. It’s fully kicked in now, so go.”

He blinked. Processed. Nodded. “Tell me what to do.”

She told him.

And the next thing he knew, he was wrapping her blood-soaked arm in the bandages she’d brought, wondering idly when they’d been able to plant one in her.

“Not everyone gets one,” she replied when he voiced that thought aloud. “Just us three red-stamps.” Neither brought up the question of whether, much less how, Rumlow had removed his own.

And within minutes she was back on her feet again, sucking down a can of protein water and slipping the pack back on. “Put on your boots and follow me.”

_You didn’t need to command that._ But Barnes barely found it in himself to even consider protesting as he slipped nimbly through the high window behind her.

They dropped down onto the adjacent room’s roof, prowling low and away from the gutters. He halted when she held up her hand and proceeded when she pointed forward. They took long, twisting routes about the campus, ostensibly to stick to critical gaps in the security feeds. Nonetheless, newer and stranger questions popped into his head as they steadily made their way toward the northeastern boundary of the campus. _She’s known how to leave this whole time? Why wait?_

And then they’d made it to the electrified fence. “That’s gonna short out my arm,” he protested. Nat put one finger to her lips and pulled a thick rubber glove from her backpack. Just one.

_Lower voltage than they want us to think_ , she motioned to him in ASL. _Will hurt, but not enough to immobilize._

Fine with him. Up he climbed.

The agony of the fence’s bite was real and horrid, sure, but had nothing on the hell that had been the Red Room, and the torment of that long first year inside. Barnes brought to mind some of the worst memories, just to have something to make the electric burn that less painful in comparison. The jeering laughter, the names and taunts, the positions they’d put him in, the objects they’d used—

Up, and then over. He let himself free-fall from twenty feet up; not even a creak from his knees as he landed silently on his feet. Nice. He blew on his raw hands, surprised at how quickly the sores had begun to harden. _Something else they’d done to me while I was out?_ Nat dropped right behind him, hissed a bit, and eventually motioned to continue. His eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, with more fir trees growing discernible as they progressed.

“FUCK—”

His ears felt as though they’d been stabbed—no, no, he consoled himself, just the sirens— _sirens?_

Okay, _fuck._

“Come on,” Nat shouted, suddenly full-on sprinting through the gaps between thick trunks and foliage. He obeyed silently, his motivation this time around both intrinsic and extrinsic—the Curse would eat at him otherwise, yeah, but this was his way out, and he had no desire to let STRIKE play with him should they fulfill their mission. All or nothing.

Nat bounded up into the branches, jumping and swinging from boughs precisely thick enough to prompt him into wondering how often she’d tested this route before. A few times they stopped dead still as their fellow students noisily trampled the forest grounds below, their flashlight beams somehow missing him so long as he moved just as Nat instructed. _Damn, she was good._ Luckily, for him. As always.

They spent the whole night repeating that pattern, leaping and freezing and ducking and dodging and leaping some more, with scarcely four minutes passing before another hunter would close in. A few times Bucky’s arm had even signaled to him the telltale vibrations of approaching footsteps—a student intelligent enough to keep his or her movements hushed and subtle. He’d motion to Nat, and she’d nod and tuck the two of them against whatever tree held them up at the time.

Odd. Each time he buried his head into the sturdy fir bark, something in his mind began to gnaw away at his senses. Like he’d been here before, only at a different time of day. Just, suddenly, a tree, holding him in place as the world twisted and writhed around him. Letting him know that all was not lost. That he wasn’t alone—that others existed out there, were maybe closer than even he had realized. People he could meet, could know, could love.

_Love?_ This shit his brain could spit out—

Barnes frowned. Surely his mind had zeroed in on Nat, currently frozen in place with her head tucked into his shoulder, listening for the coast to clear.

If she loved him, well, it was in her own way. The logistical love, the pragmatic and efficient love that kept him alive and well no matter the odds. And here they were, years later, on the brink of escape from the Red Room, perhaps for the first time in both of their lives. Perhaps for the last.

But again that sense of déjà vu persisted. The texture of tree bark. Frigid air. Unfathomable sadness, eating at his vision. The touch of someone significant against his chilled skin. Names—someone else’s, yeah, and his own. _Barnes._

Unreal.

They kept the pattern up through the night and all through the next day. The sun set before Nat finally let him take a breather, take a piss, take one of the protein bars— _I said one, you jerk._

Finally, at the approaching edge of the forest—the trees here thinner, shorter, scanter—they returned to the ground, to walking. Not running. Hiding and staying silent would help them more than any increase in speed, Nat had assured him. Best to save his energy for listening out for— _oh, no._

“Freeze,” a hunter’s voice commanded. And so he and Nat obeyed. Had to.

Barnes recognized the student—from the perimeter-maintaining SHIELD team rather than the special-case STRIKE. Short, dirty blonde hair, a harshly-lined face, water-colored eyes. Hearing aids in both ears. One pistol in one trembling hand.

But then Nat spoke. “Clint.”

The trembling stopped as the SHIELD member halted in place, matching them. _“Tasha?”_

Barnes realized that Clint’s _freeze_ command had frozen even his tongue. So here he was, stuck in place, unable to speak, and yet Nat seemed to possess that freedom. Did each Cursed person possess a different amount of leeway with their orders? He felt a pang of jealousy, not for the first time. Both Rumlow and Nat had clearly been granted a higher level of tenacity. He was the worst off of the three.

“I have to take you back,” Clint whispered, his voice breaking into a high-pitched whisper at the last word.

_What?_ Why was the hunter stalling? The sooner he returned with the two would-be escapees in tow, the sooner he would be rewarded. No, Barnes knew. With that inflection, combined with the pained look in his eyes…

Silence. He glanced out of the corner of his eye to find Nat signing with her hands. But not ASL, or he would have been able to interpret her signals. This was different. Esoteric.

Clint’s mouth twitched, quirked upward. The pistol began to shake again. That was when Barnes realized—remembered—where he’d seen Clint before. Different age group, yeah, the one group older than his, but not Honors level by performance ranking. In training a few times. Never with a gun—always with a bow. Moving targets, or in motion himself, prowling and rapid-firing without having to even squint at his prey. Clint was _Barton._ Clint Barton, number eight-ninety-nine.

Barnes recalled Nat’s sudden, infrequent disappearances then. How her returns oft came paired with some knife-edge of an energy that manifested in her immediate web forays, endless pacing, sudden knife-throwing practice, or refusal to speak to anyone over the next day. He had not put much effort into wrapping his mind around that, instead relishing the time spent solely with Rumlow. 

Fuck, he missed Rumlow. Rumlow wouldn’t have had to freeze immediately, could have knocked the guy out then ordered the other two to continue. They wouldn’t even be in this position if Rumlow hadn’t fucking _run._

Speaking of which, no one had moved yet. Including Clint Barton.

“You could come with us,” Nat breathed, continuing to sign with her hands, her feet still rooted to the ground. She had spoken aloud, not for Clint’s benefit, Barnes realized, but for his.

And miraculously, Clint glanced behind. Looked ahead again. Shuddered. Lowered his weapon. “Let’s go.”

Nat smiled and took his hand.

Before sunrise, they made it to real live god damn civilization—a teensy tree farm at the edge of the earth, with a mud-encrusted pickup waiting at the end of—at the beginning of, for them—the lone dirt road, its tires having left deep tracks leading to the rest of the world. To the future.

Barnes volunteered to hotwire the thing. Easier done than said.

Freedom beckoned.


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

Freedom tasted of fresh snow, of gasoline, of stolen wallets and truck stop showers and roadside food stands that only took cash.

Clint, he learned, possessed no filter. Possessed eyesight beyond normal human capabilities. Possessed a taste for black coffee, for red meat, and for any opportunity to pet a stray dog.

“Who’s the smartest puppy in the whoooole world?” he would ask their shaggy new companion, Lucky The Pizza Dog, every god damn morning. “Noooot you! Noooot you, you crazy fucker. Have some jerky. No, I insist.”

Nat was practically a different person outside the Lemurian-Star Institute, linking elbows with Clint and tossing bites of funnel cake at Barnes when he failed to pay attention to their conversation. Demanding they stop at every crossing river so she could stick her feet in. Humming along with the radio, her deep voice always slightly off-key.

So was Barnes, now that he thought about it. He found himself smiling occasionally, unprompted. He let himself stop to smell the clouds of smoke wafting over from his perpetually newest favorite barbecue joint. He experimented with unlikely soda flavors, and questionable highway routes, and with clothing styles.

After an endless sea of gray cotton, of high-waisted pants and plastic buttons, the sheer variety in stylistic presentations of the General Population dazzled Barnes. The unlimited potential outfit possibilities inspired his insisting that they make frequent treks to outlet malls, where a pickpocketed bill or two would go unnoticed by the housewives on their escapades or teenagers who’d be grumpy regardless.

“Your ass was made for skinny jeans,” Clint commented. “Just so you know. 'cause I can’t stop looking at it. It’s like a train wreck.” He sniffed. “I hate you.”

Barnes ate it up. His ass was perfect, and he knew it, and no one in the universe could take that away from him. All the more reason to procure pairs of tight pants in every fabric color possible. And tank tops, and Henley shirts, and hoodies. Necklaces. Single-use hair dye samples, just enough to add a streak or two of fire-engine red or acid green to his chin-length locks. Nat would braid it every so often, and he let Clint tie it back into a neat bun to keep it out of the way, just as Rumlow had frequently done back at the institute.

So long as he wore a long sleeve over the arm, most people paid no mind to the visible metal hand, likely passing it off as a stylish glove. He received compliments on it from total strangers. God, it was good to be out.

They had traveled steadily southwest for nearly a month before Nat finally got around to showing him the original contents of her backpack. She had let him rest, he came to realize later. Gave him a break before jumping back into the sludge of reality. Not that he terribly minded this newer sludge, the sludge of freedom and petty crime and bargain-hunting.

High noon, in the dead center of yet another outlet mall. Sitting at a fountain. Barnes had finally found a pair of decent boots that fit him for under six dollars, and pulled them on immediately before tossing his old shredded ones in a trash bin. They had been through quite the journey.

“This was what I could pull from your suitcase,” Nat told him, removing from her backpack a short stack of novels, a black rosary, and a thin white handkerchief, worn ragged to where it was practically translucent. He could see the silver sheen of his fingers through it as he held it up for closer inspection. “Those last two were the only contents of a small cardboard box labeled _Steve,_ ” she continued, “so I figured they were of some worth.”

 _Steve._ Huh. That little punk’s face crossed his mind again. Barnes grinned, pulling the rosary over his head and tucking the cloth into his back pocket. “Think these were from him? Or for him?”

“Maybe both. They’d found traces of your DNA on the majority of the rag, and mostly of someone else’s on the rosary. You still don’t remember anything?”

Barnes shook his head. “Just a face. A kid’s, maybe sixteen, seventeen. I probably wouldn’t recognize him now.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She quickly stood up, grabbed his hand, and led him to a Stark gadget shop, its rows of pristine computers welcoming them with their softly glowing screens.

“I ran HYDRA’s DNA sample data of you, and of him, through a government database. Yours is that of a dead person, Barnes. So is the other person’s. Steve’s.”

He blinked. “I’m dead? St—Steve’s _dead_?” And why did the latter revelation bother him so much more than the former?

Nat pulled up a web browser on one of the display laptops. “You’re officially dead. Steve’s file just ends abruptly. Maybe he decided to drop off the grid, or went AWOL. Multiple failed attempts to enlist in the army showed up. The last thing they have on him is that he finally made it in five years ago. It was linked to another file, but even I couldn’t hack my way into the necessary clearance level to view it. Probably the most highly classified thing I’d ever seen.” She winced. “Or didn’t see.”

 _Army._ Huh. That buzzed in his mind, the same way those trees had on the night of their escape. “The only vision I have of him—well, he’s skinny. Sick. Looks like he’d been beat up a lot. Not prime soldier material. If he made it in—” _—It’d be a fucking miracle,_ his brain automatically completed for him. ...Really? “—then, uh, maybe he did get killed, or went MIA.”

Nat nodded, her face falling. “Well, that was the bad news. Here’s the good news—your MySpace is still intact. Inactive, but intact.”

He grinned. “I was on social media?”

“You created an account in 2005, when you were sixteen. Look.” _Bucky Barnes,_ his profile read. _Brooklyn. Employed full-time at With Your Mom Last Night._

“There are several photos of you and this guy,” Nat continued. “Look familiar?”

And Barnes actually gasped. A long, drawn-out, shuddering wheeze of a thing. He felt his heart rate skyrocket. _(209 beats per minute,_ his arm informed him. _Elevated body temperature—)_ “It’s him. That’s—Nat, that’s _him—_ ”

“You think so?” she asked, her eyes beginning to glimmer once more. “This is definitely your friend?”

“Yeah. See how frail he looks? Like you could break his arm if you high-fived him.” _God,_ the kid's face was cute.

Nat whistled. “Because, if that’s the case, then that answers our first question.”

He shot her a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Here.” Nat pulled up an entirely different website— _Facebook_ —and typed two words into its search bar. A matching entry immediately autofilled. “He has the same name as this guy. Kinda looks like him, too. Coincidence?”

But Barnes shook his head at the sight of the account’s profile photo. “That’s not him. Look at it, Nat. That can’t be the same person.” They clicked through the publicly viewable photos, Barnes growing more disappointed with each one. “The face has a few similarities, yeah, but—no. No way. It’s a coincidence. They just have the same name.”

God, he needed that thrashing pain in his head to quit—

“Your friend’s file ends right when he joins the army, Barnes,” Nat slowly began. “Just in time for this guy’s service record to begin. They’re both listed as from the same area of Brooklyn as you.”

“Brooklyn had a dense population,” Barnes countered, ignoring Nat’s blatant attempt at getting him to talk about his past life. Two lifetimes ago, really. His chest had begun to sting. “His name isn’t too uncommon. It’s a different guy, Nat. Can’t you leave him alone? Please?”

Why had he grown so defensive about all of this? And why wouldn’t his heart quit pounding? The guy was cute, sure, and something in those charming blue eyes gnawed at his gut in the same manner as had the fir trees, and the rosary and handkerchief—but—

Plain and simple, it hurt too much.

He’d finally made it out of the institute, yeah. Had not detected any suspicious behavior, had not felt as though they’d been followed. So far, so good. He could open up his past any time he wanted, in theory. If he would just give in, let Nat poke around in his head. Look at his own fucking social media account.

But that peculiar ache in his heart always shushed away the notion, told him to stay his course. Maintain his trajectory. Be a new person. Not a toy of the institute or its brainwashed students, not whatever innocent _thing_ Steve had known before then. That thing was long gone, no matter what Barnes could learn about it. Him. Eh.

But now he could be the self that he chose to be. No long-lost acquaintances to yank into his messed-up vagabond life. No strings for anyone else to pull at. Nothing to tie him down.

"If you say so, Barnes,” Nat said with a discernible sigh. “But keep it in mind, because this isn’t just any guy. He’s got a massive social media following. Does a bunch of fundraising for veterans and war refugees. Immigrants’ rights. He promotes awareness about the prison-industrial complex, making a big commotion about the oil industry’s connection with the war overseas, about civilian deaths. He’s a walking crusade for freedom—and he could _remember_ you.” She sounded fucking awestruck. _Shit._

“Sounds like a great guy,” Barnes grumbled, not letting her get ahold of him, of that well of nostalgia bubbling up inside him, of that sting in his heart. “C’we get food, or—?”

But he froze upon feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He grabbed Nat’s arm. Made a face.

She understood.

“First rule of running is walk, don’t run,” she reminded him, slinging one arm around his hips. “Remember, they’re looking for three people. Not two.”

“Standard tac team,” he murmured, pulling up his hood. “Tell Clint we need a pickup, and fast.”

“Way ahead of you.” She slipped her phone back up her sleeve as they approached the escalator.

But Barnes could swear that one of the shoppers on the approaching upward escalator looked familiar—a STRIKE member. Rollins. _Oh._ Oh, god. No— _no—_

 _How did they get here so fast? Have they been following us the whole time? Or are there graduates in the area…?_ Fuck— _fuck—_

“Stay with me, Barnes.”

“It’s one of _them,_ ” he croaked, feeling his hands shake. “If he—don’t let him see me—Nat, please, we’ve got to—”

And Nat lifted both hands to his face and kissed him. Right there on the fucking escalator. At a base level he could detect surrounding shoppers clearing their throats, shifting their stances, turning away. More to the forefront, he could taste salt on her tongue and patience in her breath, her lungs pumping into his, slow and steady. _Hold on._

And they made it to the lower floor unscathed.

“What was that,” he muttered as they cut through a Sears.

“Public displays of affection—”

“I _know._ Wasn’t really asking so much as—”

“You can thank me later.” She had lifted two more wallets by the time they reached the store’s outer entrance. An ugly gray Ford sedan pulled up the instant they stepped outside.

“Still got a tail?” Clint asked as he rolled smoothly through the massive parking lot. Lucky panted happily at them from the front seat.

“Negative,” Barnes automatically replied, having scanned behind them one last time. “As soon as you hit the freeway, floor it.”

“Sweet.”

They left New Mexico within the hour. Nat had never been to San Antonio before, and told them so.

“Good. Because you owe me half a dozen tacos. I was _that close_ to successfully siphoning gasoline when you texted me.”

“Yeah?” Barnes growled. “’cause I think _making sure our asses don’t get hauled back to the Red Room_ overrides your stingy—”

Nat yanked Barnes’ head down into her lap. Stroked his hair, her short nails dragging wonderfully across his scalp. “No point in stressing right now,” she warned him. “You aren’t helping anyone.”

“It’s because you logged into my Myspace,” he eventually muttered into her lap. “They—HYDRA has me pinged. They’re still invested in us.” He sniffed. “In bringing us back there.”

“Why do you think I picked a public computer instead of my laptop?” she countered, giving him a steely grin. “I set up a virus that’ll log into your account at a few other Stark shops along the west coast over the next few months.”

Fine with him. He murmured in thanks, letting himself drift off to sleep as she carded her fingers through his bangs.

Nonetheless he kept his hood up the rest of that month.

* * *

As it turned out, the CIA was nearly as competent as its employees considered themselves to be.

In Peggy dove, filing paperwork by day and running surveillance by night. Well, the nights she spent away from Angie. Generally when Angie was out of town, flying up to New York or over to LA for bigger auditions. She’d even made it into a few speaking roles by then, and more than one commercial.

It almost felt as though she’d returned to the warzone. She felt invigorated each morning, happy to wake up a few minutes early to braid up her hair and touch up her nails. She’d text Steve, wishing him a good day, asking him for progress updates on his newest fundraising ventures—usually social media competitions, or silent auctions, or the occasional benefit.

Steve Rogers had become a public hero during his fighting days, and then a household name as a symbol of everything it considered good about the U. S. of A.—its resilience, its rebelliousness, its unpolished charm. Steve was eloquent regarding his beliefs in personal liberties and the shaping of certain levels of public policy, without the suspicious smoothness of even the politicians alongside whom he fought. Something about his expressive earnestness lent him the public’s collective heart. _Captain America_ had nearly become an unironic compliment once again. His moral center practically had its own library of public documentation and commentator-driven speculation. And the CIA loved speculation almost as much as it hated it.

Which had led Peggy down her current, unnerving trajectory. She’d stumbled across a select few files while cross-managing multiple internal affairs projects that had put her completely on edge, once she’d added two and two together.

Tales, rumors, video footage of human beings cursed with absolute obedience. Slaves unable to protest, sex workers engaging in feats otherwise impossible for the un-augmented human, sleeper agents with full knowledge of their atrocious deeds who had consistently fooled lie detector tests unaided. Horror stories.

But no connection between any of them save for what behaviors had appeared on footage or in reports. No flags in their medical records, no fried synapses or nanotechnology embedded under their skin. Nothing effectively in common.

Not yet.

Though Peggy’s superiors had shrugged away the concerns she’d brought up to them, they’d never explicitly banned her from pursuing those loose ends. Well, there it was. Her new mission.

She needed to find these people, and save them.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” her favorite coworker yelped after accidentally swiping Peggy’s purse off of her desk. “Here, no, let me get it, Peg.” The blonde quickly began scooping Peggy’s wallet and other possessions up off of the floor. “I’m _such_ a klutz.”

“Easy, Dottie. It happens to the best of us,” Peggy laughed. “Headed to lunch?”

Dorothy Underwood beamed, her sunny curls bouncing as she nodded. “Why, yes! Would you care to join?”

Peggy grinned, powering down her computer. “I’d love to.”

* * *

“How’re you liking the big San An?” Sam asked when they finally met for drinks.

 _Ocho_ boasted a gorgeous wall of ceiling-high bay windows, its Tiffany-blue accents and bright furniture lit artfully by both the enormous chandeliers inside the building and by the gorgeous setting sun outside. It lay on a quieter stretch of the Riverwalk, closer to a cluster of museums than the busier downtown. Sam had snagged two stools out on a narrow balcony, with only thin metal railing separating them from the adjacent sidewalk and its foliage.

Steve chuckled. “I don’t think I’ll be able forget the Alamo anytime soon. But the festival’s been a huge success so far. Never thought we could accomplish something that big.”

“I never thought Senator Stern would jump on board so fast,” Sam laughed. “Not to look a gift twenty grand in the mouth, but I kinda wish the dude could help these people out without turning it into some kinda campaign promotion.”

Steve nodded, wrinkling his nose. “It’s the price of getting that much support. The better it makes you look, the more your friends wanna do something similar. Fingers crossed we get some halfway decent politicians jumping on next time.”

“Hah. Anytime you find yourself a halfway decent politician, I want you to call me. Immediately.” Sam shook his head. “Watch my seat, I’m gonna get us a round. Congratulations are in order—over fifty grand raised, yeah?”

“Fifty and change.” Steve inhaled deeply as Sam headed toward the bar. The spring air smelled of flowers. Azaleas, he guessed. Many a young couple could be seen strolling languidly down the stately stone paths bordering the river, hands clasped, enjoying the prime date weather.

Well, mostly couples, plus one threesome on the far side of the Riverwalk. Steve watched idly as two young men and a woman collapsed onto a park bench together, the blond man with a fluffy dog in tow. Said dog immediately began straining at its leash, until its captor and the woman bolted up and headed toward a grassier stretch further on, linking their arms as they walked.

The third smirked at them, before leaning back and closing his eyes, stretching his arms along the top of the wide backrest. And Steve’s jaw dropped.

_No—no way—it can’t be—_

“Where you going, Rogers?”

He barely processed Sam’s startled query as he sprinted toward the glass side door. “Be right back!”

“The hell?”

Even though months had passed since his last taxing fight, Steve’s muscles and agility had somehow stayed intact. The Vita-Rays possessed no half-life, he supposed. Fine with him.

Steve dashed out of the patio’s glass doors and took a sharp right, onto a quaint footbridge that crossed the river. It jutted just high enough for tourist boats to pass smoothly underneath. His heart threatening to burst, he half-stumbled over to the bridge’s railing. It gave him a great view over the river, over the benches and sidewalks, just what he would need to confirm—what he would need to attribute the crazed jolting of his heart to more than just his mind playing tricks on him. Cruel, cruel tricks. Unless—

 _Please, let me see you,_ he found himself praying. _Please, let it be you. It’s been so long..._

Longer hair. Way longer. It fell in loose waves, not quite to his shoulders, a streak of it dyed purple. And he’d gotten bigger, somehow, broader shoulders—though it was tough to say under that thick hoodie. God, those pants were tight. Steve idly ran his tongue across his lower lip.

But it was him. No doubt about it. The same thick brows, the same wide planes of his face, that same squared jaw, the same full, curving lips—

And then the man opened his eyes. Icy gray, beneath thick dark lashes. Unmistakable eyes, looking right at him.

There, then gone.

 _“Hey!”_ Steve vaulted off the bridge and rolled to a landing on the opposite riverbank. But the man had long taken off, sprinting impressively fast in those pants and high-tops. Steve rounded the corner, nearly crashing into a cluster of old ladies, and apologized profusely before picking up the trail—

To no avail. The man was nowhere to be seen in any direction. Steve covered his mouth with one hand, feeling as though the ground underfoot had begun to spin out of control.

 _“Bucky,”_ he wheezed, those gorgeous eyes flashing relentlessly through his vision. Shining in the sunset, widening in fear. _Fear._

_Why did you run?_

It had been so instantaneous. Just, up and away. No second thoughts. Seeing Steve had triggered him to bolt.

_Why are you afraid? Afraid of me?_

It was embarrassing, nearly. How after so long, after all the things he’d done, all the battles he’d fought, all the near-death experiences, all his new missions upon returning home, all his trials and successes—for a mere glimpse of one single person to undo him completely.

_What happened to you?_

As though no time had passed since his senior year of high school, he could feel Bucky’s arms around him, could hear Bucky’s soft laughter in his ears, could taste Bucky’s tongue on his own—

 _Damn it._ His knees gave out; he let himself fall, only vaguely aware that his cell was buzzing with Sam’s ringtone.

_What happened to us?_

* * *

“Y’know, I think you two should look into that problem ya got,” Clint drawled after finishing his chorizo-and-slaw five-for-one special (one of which he’d fed to Lucky). “S’gotta be discussed somewhere. Online, maybe. Someone’s had to have noticed by now.”

“You think I haven’t been looking?” Nat laughed dryly. “Because it’s been one dead end after the other. And Barnes won’t reach out to the one childhood friend of his that we _know_ we could totally interview.”

“You had friends?” Clint asked, his eyes wide.

Barnes stuck out his tongue. “Like some kid I haven’t spoken to in six years would have all the answers. Think, you two. If he’d known how to break the Curse, I wouldn’t fucking be here. Prolly wouldn’t’ve ended up in that place to begin with.”

He pointedly left out the apparition from the day before—the ghost. The man on the bridge.

Nat would’ve had a field day, he knew. Would have marched them back to San Antonio, would have commanded they do reconnaissance and figure out where he lived. Would have probably kidnapped the poor guy. For starters. All because he’d looked similar to someone that might have been connected to a kid who maybe hadn’t forgotten Barnes, in all those years. And that was a thin maybe.

At first, Barnes had merely felt spooked. Had been sure that the person staring so ravenously at him had been a hunter, a HYDRA _graduate_ or worse. He’d run for his fucking life in those five seconds, only for his processing to kick in after losing the guy.

_No way he’s HYDRA. He acts incorrectly; he makes all the wrong mistakes._

Freezing in place, yelling, gaping like that—unforgivable. 

But that look in that man's eyes had been—so much. Too much. Too familiar. Too hot. The pain in his chest had leapt up instantly, a bitter sting that had since faded to aching, to numbness, as he’d caught up with the other two and Lucky, enjoying their pleasant springtime stroll.

A specific name kept fighting its way onto Barnes’ tongue. He swallowed it, pushed it back into the gray past. Focused on the present.

Nat grumbled, conceding. “Still, that could be our only lead. Well, okay, one of two. But the other one’s even thinner.”

Barnes inhaled sharply. “Wait, there’s someone else?”

“Something,” she replied, her voice dropping to a whisper. She began signing for Clint. “I was able to dig through HYDRA’s hard drive a few times while we were still in the institute. They had plans for us red-stamps, Barnes—you, me, Rumlow, the ones that came before us. Even years before we were brought in. They _knew._ ” She scowled. “That’s why I knew we had to bust out the instant they’d given you the serum and replaced your arm.”

He blinked. “Serum? What serum?”

Nat gave him a steady, low gaze. “It was developed from the blood of some soldier the army had beefed up with Vita-Rays a few years back, and was top-secret even within military high command. Way the hell higher clearance than anything I could hack with a single laptop. As in, the President doesn’t even know about it. Pure HYDRA.”

 _But you found something,_ Clint signed while sucking more Coke through the straw in his plastic cup.

“Had to do some of the extrapolation myself,” she admitted. “But it was going to be given either to you or Rumlow, depending on who survived that Trial.” _The one Rumlow had run from._ Barnes idly wondered whether Rumlow was still out there, somewhere, or if STRIKE or SHIELD had recovered him. After that he tried not to think about it at all.

“Why not keep all three of us alive?” Barnes growled. “That would’ve made sense logistically.”

“They prefer quality to quantity,” Nat replied, her face darkening. “The red-stamps who came before us had to kill each other off as well; the last survivor got her star tattoo and _graduated_. Gave me the laptop. She’s out there somewhere, waiting for orders.”

Clint frowned. “So how come they gave _him_ the tat?” he asked aloud, pointing at Barnes. "Or, uh…decal?"

“I think I can guess,” he sighed, remembering how he’d finally outranked Nat before his Trial.

“The only thing in our files that connected the three of us was the mention of our parents’ criminal records,” she continued, stroking his flesh hand. “Specifically, that each of us had at least one parent who had spent time in a high-security prison. And who had been volunteered for medical testing in exchange for a shortened sentence.”

Barnes felt his bones ice over. “Then—then it could be, what, something biological? And—hereditary?” His heart skipped a beat. “A mutation.”

“Holy shit,” Clint murmured.

“Maybe. But that was it. Literally, nothing else. So it could be a start—or a red herring.” Nat grimaced. “Could be a waste of time.”

Barnes laughed. “Well, what else have we got to do?” He looked at Clint and began to sign. _You up for this?_

Clint finished his drink and slammed it down onto the rickety picnic table. “Lucky says he’s down. So, yeah, that settles it.” He scratched behind the dog’s floppy ears. “I’m guessing we’ll need to break into a ton of prisons, though.”

Nat grinned, her eyes softening. “Next stop, Louisiana.”


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

From what they could discern after months of touring it, The Pelican State boasted more private prisons than private high schools.

They each took turns—breaking into every lazily guarded prison’s administrative offices, hacking local databases, picking which boudin shacks to try out, paying for that day’s gasoline, keeping watch in shifts while the other two slept. Two nights in a row they camped in the drier patches of the Atchafalaya Basin, Clint somehow coaxing more than one gator into chilling with them for hours on end by leaving trails of marshmallows behind. Barnes _really_ liked to think he had hallucinated that part.

By the time they finally reached New Orleans ( _the end of the line,_ he whispered to himself in awe as its colorful skyline approached), Nat was willing to set them up with an apartment—a cramped studio with month-to-month leasing, cash only, no questions asked. It lay off the tourist-beaten path in a patch of the Mid-City still recovering from the hurricane that had leveled it nearly eight years prior. No central air conditioning, no washing machine nor drier, and spotty electricity at best—but a god damn paradise compared with the car they’d lived in for the past year.

After walking inside for the first time, the three of them showered together in that tiny stall, giggling like children, before finally crashing atop a nest thrown together from their clothes. Fireflies blinked at them through the window panes, and the ceiling fan overhead clacked away, lulling Barnes into his first truly deep sleep in months.

They slowly fell into a lilting rhythm, testing out their new life, venturing further each passing day. Barnes ran errands, for his friendly neighbors’ pennies or their righteous home-cooked meals, mowing overgrown lawns or keeping an eye on their cute kids from his porch. Natasha could access the many different city jails’ databases from any nearby coffee house with wifi, thanks to her custom-tailored VPN on that ancient ThinkPad. Clint and Lucky returned from the French Market one afternoon with an honest-to-god bow and matching arrow quiver. “Gonna make my own arrows,” he threatened through a bubbly grin.

Furniture gradually appeared over time—first a shitty queen-sized mattress, then a pillowtop king in decent shape, thanks to a local college’s unbelievable Classifieds board. LCD screens, a sturdy breakfast table, an actual dog bed for Lucky. Pots and pans and forks and plates. _Chairs._

Barnes elected to put his hard-earned Red Room skills to use. Tourists were easy to distract and even easier to pickpocket. More than one chain restaurant would let them trade a twelve-pound sack of carnival throws for a meal at certain times of year. Festivals rife with free food and alcohol were child’s play to infiltrate. He discovered that he loved bounce music. And yakamein. And faux fur-lined jackets. By December he’d acquired three, all in different styles and colors.

"You know those are only gonna be useful for about two months out of the year, right?" Clint jeered. Barnes flipped him off, relishing the fluffiness.

Clint, for that matter, managed to find a steady-paying job requiring no paperwork or background checks, helping with set management for drag queen performances at the cluster of gay bars in the Quarter. His near-deafness proved something of an asset, as the blasting club music distracted him less from his tasks than it did the other part-timers. He practiced archery in the yard and spent his Mondays off hunting with Lucky. More often than not he returned home with a freshly killed duck or rabbit. He taught Barnes how to shoot with a bow, and gave Nat any useful gossip he picked up from the queens.

Nat developed a taste for history and cultural preservation, spending most of her research breaks at the variety of museums the area boasted. NOMA even gave free admission on Wednesdays, only requiring her to spend the minimal effort necessary to forge a valid state ID. She attended exclusive gallery openings in stolen formalwear and jewels, freelanced out her Photoshop skills to local businesses in need of advertisement design, and bought a secondhand bicycle.

“Mid-City Yacht Club’s throwin’ a boil!”, their neighbors often called from across the street, or “Why don’t y’all come to Finn’s with us,” or “Y’all need a ride to Nyx?” Barnes, Clint, and Nat had been hesitant to reply at first, then apologetic with their refusals, then sheepish with their acceptances. And in seemingly no time they’d made friends. Lots of them.

None who probed or quizzed—it seemed enough of the residents had ended up there from out of state as well, and for a variety of reasons on a spectrum of good and bad. _Transplants,_ the hard locals called them between sips. “Bet y’all can’t pronounce _this_ street name—”

And thirteen months into their charmed new life, Nat made a breakthrough.

“Gather round, boys.” Her expression was the most severe it had been in months. “Story time.”

“Am I gonna like this story?”

“No."

From the scattered medical files Nat had gathered together from their many prison raids, Nat had slowly but surely connected the majority of the odd-looking cases to—“You guessed it.” —HYDRA.

Like someone had read _A Clockwork Orange_ and had come away with precisely the wrong message, a black-op criminal-corrective experiment had been authorized back in the 60s. It had taken place in many privately-owned prison medical bays, far from the prying eyes of internal affairs. Always violent offenders, those uncomfortable cases not quite worthy of the death penalty but undoubtedly destined for long-term extra expense otherwise. No matter how many other prisoners they could pay under the table to come at them, they continued to survive. Tough ones. Smart ones. Perfect test subjects.

Something, somewhere in all of that text, sent a chill down his spine—what, he could not say. It had to be an unconscious thing, his eye spotting a long-lost friend in a crowd before his mind had even begun to process it.

“And it all leads back to this guy—Arnim Zola. He made the original proposal, set the original project timelines and test objectives. Head scientist was named Johann Fenhoff. Haven’t found as much info on him as I’d like, but he shows up in all of the successful attempt logs.”

“Either of them still alive?”

“Neither,” Nat replied, scowling. “Died of natural causes decades ago. However, I did get a lock on where the majority of their funding originated.” She pulled up another dossier. “Either of you two remember a Johann Schmidt?”

Clint shrugged as Barnes shook his head.

“Well, he was the Secretary of Defense for a while, one with a pretty active following. The intelligence community as a whole is sick and tired of the conspiracy theories speculating his role in many of the assassinations that took place in the sixties. If that tells you anything.”

Clint squinted. “Schmidt contracts Zola and Fenhoff to plant the obedience gene in random points around society. Did he think a sizeable amount of people would contract it before he died? That’s less than one generation.”

“Maybe it wasn’t just about him,” Barnes murmured. “Was he deep in a political party? Championed one big cause in particular? Had some kind of political philosophy?”

“Funny you should mention that,” Nat mumbled. “He was remarkably conservative when it came to nationalism. Any money left over from what he sent to Zola was spent on border patrol or undocumented worker detainment. Had a pretty set idea of what made someone an American.”

“All of this took place in the U.S.?” Clint cut in. “These dudes all had German names.”

“And that’s not a coincidence,” Nat continued. “Third Reich ties, all three guys. Most of the bigger conspiracy theories involved some type of underground, long-term scheme to reenact the Holocaust. No paperwork suggesting it, though. At least nothing tied directly to any one of the three.”

“So I take it we haven’t secretly been carting entire ethnic groups off to work camps?”

“Well, we have,” Clint muttered. “Dunno how good of a look you got at all those private prisons we got to tour, but the records speak for themselves.” The three shuddered collectively.

“Please tell me this Schmidt guy isn't still kicking.”

“He's not, actually. Passed away even before the other two. But, he left a protégé.” Nat clicked through to yet another dossier. “This guy.”

Barnes inhaled sharply. “I know him.”

Clint shot him a look. “Yeah? From where?”

“Dunno. But I’ve seen his face before. A lot.” _Heya, James,_ the man mouthed at him from the gray depths of his mind.

“Someone from before?” Nat asked. “He had an address in Brooklyn for a few years…were you neighbors?”

Barnes shrugged. “Can’t remember. I just—I recognize his face.” That fucking gnawing feeling, again. He thought of something. “Show the list of medically altered prisoners again.”

Wait for it…wait for it… _there._ One of them was named George M. Barnes.

_…Dad?_

“Status?” Nat asked him. He realized he’d begun to weep. Openly. The front of his shirt was a mess.

“Uh.” He wiped his face. “Y-yeah? Don’t—dunno—”

“He passed away on the outside, before you turned thirteen,” Nat murmured, squinting at him. “You already lived through that, before you even made it to the Red Room.” 

Clint squeezed his shoulder. “Sorry to hear that, man. You forgot about him, too?”

“Guess so.” He shuddered. “Hang on, anything in there about his family? Wife?...me?”

“See, there you are,” she answered, pointing at one spot on the screencap. “James Buchanan Barnes.” She sucked in a breath. “Your mother’s passed away, too. Five years ago.” Long after he’d entered the institute.

“Fuck.” He stood up, paced, groaned, punched the wall, punched himself. They waited patiently for who knew how long.

He’d had a mother, a father, and had lost them. Without knowing, without caring. Fuck. _Fuck,_ he was still fucked up, after all this time, would always be fucked up—would always—would—

“I’ve got nothing left,” he croaked. “None of us do.”

But Nat shook her head and rounded on him. “Clint and I are the ones who don’t have anything left, Barnes. Like it or not, _you still have Steve._ No matter who he is now. If I’d had a life before the institute—if I ever got wind of even one person who could remember me? You bet your ass I’d drop everything and find him.”

He groaned. “What’d I say, Nat? Even if he was the same guy, somehow, we gotta leave him alone. The more we find out about my old life, the worse it gets. HYDRA could target him if I'm caught with him.” He scowled. “And I still maintain there’s no fucking way he's the same guy,” he lied.

Two wide blue eyes flickered to mind. It had been well over a year since the man on the bridge had spotted him. And if he could still feel that hungry, heartbroken gaze connecting with his own, well. Barnes neglected to mention it right then.

“You don’t have any evidence to defend that,” Clint countered. “And there’s only one way to really find out.”

“What, you want me to kidnap him? Interrogate him? It’s been years—even in the impossible chance it is real? He’s not gonna fucking recognize me. Please, bury it, you two.” He could have commanded Nat to do so, had his moral center given way to something more pragmatic, more cruel. Totally not his style.

But it did turn out to be hers.

“You need to meet him again, Barnes. _Tell him who you are._ I don’t care how long you wait to do it, but don’t let this drop. One of us deserves to find a way back.” 

“My entire family was long gone even before I made it into the institute,” Clint told him. “Nat’s parents both died in prison. None of us had any siblings, any extended family, any friends. We’d been in the Red Room practically before we could walk.”

He was their last shot at connecting to the real world, Barnes knew. Their one grip on that veiled reality outside of HYDRA’s grasp—outside of their forced concealment, their collective paranoia. _But I can't—_

“It hurts too much,” he felt himself croak in response. “I can’t—he wouldn’t—now that I’m—”

“Barnes.” She took a deep breath. “All three of us saw the photos of you two together as kids. There's no way he wouldn't remember—”

_“All—?”_

“Yeah, I took a look,” Clint admitted. “You don’t just forget about someone you’ve been that close to, for that long. Honestly? I'm kinda jealous.”

Nat gave him a steady gaze. “If it was the other way around—if it was up to him to find his way back to you, and you thought he’d disappeared forever—wouldn’t you want him to at least try?”

God, he hated how right they were. He wiped his eyes. “I’ll do it. But I need time.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” she grinned as Clint looked around for Lucky’s leash. “Let’s walk. C'mon.”

Later that night, soft waves of golden hair haunted his dreams. A soothing, deep voice murmured against his throat. A half-familiar face on an unfamiliar body smiled at him, flushing into a tantalizing pink.

* * *

Celebrities had begun to drop like flies.

Well, certain ones. Not actors, nor athletes, nor politicians, but grassroots activists. The types with public speaking tours, linked with nonprofits, Kickstarters. No histories of jail time, nor any records of dropped charges of any violent acts. No one connected with that whole nationwide Ponzi scheme mess of 2008. Decent people, from what she could tell.

It was mystifying. Peggy read over the same twenty-six files again and again, on repeat forever, struck by how little there was to go on, really. Some deaths had been more scandalous than others—taken out by someone close to them, in secure situations, by food poisoning or stabbing or worse. Those with the weakest alibi were the closest in non-blood relation. Spouses. Lovers, previously unknown to the public. Old friends.

The ringing of her cell finally broke her away from the rabbit hole of homicide reports. Peggy sighed, fishing the phone out of her purse, before smiling at the caller ID. “Hello, my darling.”

“English! You know what time it is?!” Angie scolded. “Please tell me you’ve left the office.”

Peggy glanced at her desk clock and sucked in a breath. Seven-fifty. And they needed to be at the benefit, dressed to mingle, by eight. _Damn._

“Oh, I’m stuck in traffic!” she yelped, logging out of her desktop and scrambling for her purse and coat. “Be there soon! Could you pull a dress out for me? The red one?”

“Double-time it, Peg,” Angie laughed. “All of my potential future bosses are gonna be present. And it’s a fundraiser for ESL kids to get to attend performance art classes. You don’t wanna let the poor things down, do ya?”

“Absolutely not,” Peggy laughed, waving to the secretary before striding briskly toward the parking garage. “I’ll be home before you know it, and we’re going to have a lovely night. Make sure to wear shoes you can dance in, darling.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” Angie chuckled before hanging up.

* * *

The asset had always envied women like her current target. Wanted to be one of those self-assured, earnest things who wore their hearts on their sleeves and walked their own talk. Inspiring and charming, performing their work in the sunlight rather than skulking about in the shadows.

Speaking of which—okay, toxin deployed. Time to beat it. _Let no one see you._

She crept back out through the window, leaving the place as neat as she’d found it. Well, almost as neat. She’d left one little gift behind.

One hour from now, the course of history would fall that much more closely in line with where it belonged.

And she’d have fresh gossip for Peggy and her cute roommate over brunch tomorrow! Boy oh boy. ‘The scandal,’ she’d breathe. ‘Poisoned! By the lead actor opposite her most famous role! And at a black-tie charity event, no less!’ Boy oh boy oh _fucking_ boy.

_Leave at midnight. Report back immediately._

So into the night she flew, choking back her inner self’s protests, its shameful sobbing. _That_ self needed to remain a tiny bird with its wings clipped, needed to stay locked within the iron cage of her training, her orders. Her Curse.

* * *

Peggy and Angie left the event and its disruption in a daze, both ashen-faced, not speaking the entire ride home, lest either of them fall into an emotional breakdown.

It was supposed to have been a pivotal moment in Angie’s life. The closest she had ever come to a solid network of reputable, powerful people in her beloved field of work, only to be torn apart by—by what they’d find out later to have been the result of a personal grudge taken too far. Not that Peggy bought it.

Angie had every right to freak out. And Peggy, well. She would need to begin keeping an eye on her old Army pal. He had been on a roll as of late, raising money and yelling too loudly and undoubtedly pissing certain politicians off. But how could anyone speak out against the earnest, saintly _Captain America?_ Might as well stamp _villain_ in red letters on their foreheads. Pin it on their chests. Whisper it in their ears. No; if they wanted to put down America's favorite rising star without turning him into a martyr for his cause, they’d need to be sneakier, quieter about it. Would need to strike from the shadows.

No, no good at all. She’d give Steve a call tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This jacket](https://38.media.tumblr.com/2f77af75d822f481af16356e4522e719/tumblr_n4htr9qd0C1r03eggo2_r1_250.gif) is _such a problem_


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

Two years since Nat’s command, and Barnes had contemplated following it every single day.

But each passing day, the punishment-pain remained at bay. It was hilarious, in a way; after all, once it hit, what would his first action even be? To message the poor guy on Facebook? Oof, but that would require him to create a Facebook. Just, no. Way more Clint’s style than it would ever be Barnes’.

No, it would have to be in person. And Barnes wanted to be alone for it. Wanted to see how Steve would react with no one around to judge him. Wanted to know how Steve felt about him, even still. Even after that—that run-in, nearly three years ago in San Antonio. If that really had been him.

Two years since her order, and only now did he feel ready. He’d looked up Steve’s amazing history online, had noted the level of his influence on public discourse even after only a few years in the field, had gazed for far too long at all of these gorgeous photos of him—whether stunning in a tux at a charity gala or soaked through at a fundraising carwash. _Damn._

In the back of Barnes’ mind, he knew something else had to be up. Steve was too obvious in his speeches and statements, too earnest, too real. Someone had to have been pissed off by now, he thought. Someone with a lot to lose, and even more to gain.

Well, all the more reason to take the hike up to DC. No, no, he’d looked at bus routes and had been saving cash for the past six months. It would be a two-day trip, if he made a few stops along the way. He did love sightseeing. And who could blame him?

So Barnes had begun to pack the night before. His favorite clothes, some food for the journey, a few knives and the one pistol he’d found on the sidewalk near Bienville at Rocheblave. (To be fair, he’d written an anonymous apology to the NOPD forensics unit a week afterward. But it was his now.)

He had just finished his trip to the laundromat, having stuffed that thin handkerchief into his back pocket lest the machinery shred it to dust. Clint was out on the west bank, running a delivery for their elderly landlord. Lucky had of course hopped into the front passenger seat, never one to turn down a long car ride. Nat had gone to The Fair Grinds to conduct yet more research on Johann Schmidt’s potential legacy, on what it could mean for them.

Was she ever missing out.

“Close the door behind you,” a black silhouette told him the instant Barnes had crossed the threshold. He let the burning punishment-pain attack him for a good two seconds before finally caving, batting away the urge to retch onto the floorboards. Fuck, it had been forever since someone had ordered him like that, without confirming beforehand that it’d be a command he’d happily follow anyways.

_Fuck—_

But then he saw who had spoken.

“I missed you,” Barnes croaked, feeling his eyes sting.

Rumlow sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back against the narrow stove. “So did I.”

Barnes had not been instructed to freeze. So up he crept, slowly, one foot in front of the other, until he stood flush against Rumlow. Pressed his hips against the other man’s. 

“Here to finish me?”

Wouldn’t that just be the best. The most he could ever ask for, really. A perfect end for a perfect life, or at least one that seemed to have rapidly become perfect. God knows there was no other way he’d rather go out. And Steve would have been spared the either the awkwardness or painfulness of that meeting...heh.

"I wish.” Rumlow’s mouth was on his in an instant, greedy and hot. Long-fingered hands cupped Barnes’ ass, dipped under the hemline of his tank top, tugged on the rosary beads tucked underneath, rubbed at a nipple. “You want?” he whispered into the hot skin beneath Barnes' jaw.

Barnes inhaled, ready to answer, but the affirmative hitched infuriatingly in his throat. Against all odds, a confounding image of soft blue eyes had pushed its way into his head, of searing hands holding him in place, brushing one thumb across his lower lip, stroking his cheek.

“I—no. Please, not right now. I—”

“I get it. Don’t stress.” Rumlow nodded, gently pulling away. He brushed one hand down Barnes’ throat, along his shoulder, down his metal arm. “This from after that Trial?”

He nodded. “You did good.”

“I could've sworn you died.” Rumlow’s eyes glistened. “I thought I’d followed her order. You know that? I didn’t feel the pain. Mission accomplished.” He swallowed. “It’s so weird, what gets interpreted what way. Dunno if I’ll ever get used to it. I swear, I thought I’d killed you. Couldn’t figure out how to live with myself…still don’t, sometimes.”

Barnes laughed through his nose. “But you still felt the need to look for me? Track me all the way down here?”

Rumlow’s face darkened. “Wasn’t given a choice.”

And then the world went black.

* * *

“Peg, poison wouldn’t even work on me. My system breaks toxins down too quickly. I’d maybe have a not-fun case of the runs for a few hours at most, and that's a thin maybe—”

“This is hardly the time to joke, Rogers,” Peggy spat. “If you’d seen the files, you’d understand. I need you to take my word for it this time around. I can’t say any more over an open channel. You’ve got to meet me. ASAP.”

“Peggy, the press conference is in literally one minute. Meet me after?” Steve made a strained expression at his PR intern, who had begun making reassuring slashing motions at her own throat.

“ _Damn_ it, Steve—”

“Love ya, Peg. Text me.” Wow, that sounded way more asshole-y than he’d intended. Well, too late now. “Let’s do this,” he said before the intern flipped his mic on.

And the conference went smoothly as all get out. All the right questions were asked, letting him emphasize all his favorite aspects of the upcoming charity event. He’d become a pro at these over the last few years.

“Because this is _unacceptable_ ,” he replied to the fifth question. “America isn’t an exclusive club. It’s not something you buy into, not with money, not with status, not with a damn pedigree. The fact that this policy is even something I had to hear about, in the twenty-first century—it’s absurd. I wish it were a joke.”

Smiles from the majority of the audience. Good. _Keep talking, Rogers._

He took a deep breath. “America as we know it was founded as a nation of immigrants. Those seeking a better life—seeking freedom, to live their lives the way they wanted, communities where they didn’t have to fear atavistic violence or discrimination—they made their first homes here. So for us, three centuries later, to turn people in these same exact situations away? To tell them, no, there is a fundamental difference between you and me—that your children, who were born on this soil, don’t deserve citizenship—because they’d made the mistake of being born three hundred years later? For us to send them back into the horrible circumstances they’ve worked so hard to escape?” He shot his best disgusted expression at the central camera. “I’m appalled. I’m disappointed. And I am going to fight that policy every way I can.”

One reporter raised her hand. “Anything you have to say to those combating your efforts on Capitol Hill, even now?” Everheart, he was pretty sure. One of the harder hitters. Well, now was as good as time as any to make a few enemies.

“Oh, I know they’re up there. I know about the grandstanding, the cash being thrown around. Yes, huge amounts of money, including _your taxpayer dollars,_ ” he spat at the camera, “have been dedicated to carting away kids born on American soil back into warzones, into areas ravaged by famine and genocide, because their parents were first-generation immigrants. Because they apparently missed the deadline—the ‘Last second that it’s okay to be an immigrant’ deadline. Anybody wanna fill me in on when that was, exactly?”

The crowd whooped and snapped. Excellent.

“Which brings me to today’s announcement,” he continued, flashing his battle-tested, heart-stopping, media’s-approval-stamped smile to the whole room. “If we want to kill this horrifying policy, we’re going to need to fight fire with fire.”

He cleared his throat as the flashbulbs went off, as notepad pages flipped and as pen caps tumbled across the floor.

“Next month, I will personally host three benefit galas,” he announced. “One-hundred percent of the funds will go toward spreading the word of the ridiculous INSIGHT Detainment Act; to transcribing its full content as those with the power to approve it will get to see it; and to posting its entirety on the web, so everyone will know what exactly these politicians have to say about America’s most vulnerable—about those who’ve fought the hardest to make it here. Once that’s accomplished, the rest of the funding raised from the three nights’ events will go straight to locally-run resource centers in neighborhoods with high percentages of first-generation immigrants. That sound like a good deal?”

And they roared. Hands raised high in the air, feet stamping, whistles and hollers.

“I take it that’s a yes,” he laughed, wiping at one eye as the flashbulbs pelted him from all sides. Again the crowd roared in affirmative.

The rest of the details were practically a joy to relay—that his buddy Tony “My dad didn’t flee the Holocaust to embody the American dream and build his internationally-acclaimed clean energy company from the ground up _for this bullshit to pass”_ Stark had donated the elaborate venue and refreshments, that an impressive roster of A-list artists and bands had volunteered to give stunning performances pro bono, and that a wide range of ticket prices would enable virtually anyone to attend.

Even the lowest price point would still net the ticket holder unlimited food, drinks, and admission to any of the concerts and masquerade ball for one of the three nights; more amenities were added for each successive level.

Finally, the Vibranium-Tier Ultimate VIP Experience guaranteed one purchaser admission for all three masquerade balls, club seating for all twelve performances plus backstage passes, gift baskets worth over two grand apiece, and invitations to an ultra-exclusive afterparty with Captain America himself plus the famed Howling Commandos. Yes, Mr. Stark had already confirmed his attendance. Yes, his esteemed wife, the current Stark Industries CEO, would be joining as well. Yes, this shit was guaranteed to be rad as hell. No, Captain Rogers could not sign your scrotum right at this moment. Any other questions…?

“What have you _done,_ ” Peggy moaned to him an hour later as Sam walked in with a platter of steaming pancakes. Congratulatory food for Steve, consolation food for Peggy, and soap opera-viewing refreshments for himself, the way this night was headed.

“Hang in there, Peg,” he pleaded. “Bullets bounce off of me, remember? Snipers are the least of my worries. You’ve gotta come to the afterparty with us, by the way. I did say _all_ of the Commandos would be present.”

“I can’t believe I’m this close to kicking your stupid arse into the next time zone,” Peggy growled. “All of these assassination methods? Tailor-made, for each victim to appear as though they’d been in an affair, or worse. Whoever you just publicly threatened on live television—Steve, they’re going to be ready. Superpower-strength or no, _you need a security detail._ ”

“That’s all?” Sam cut in, gesturing for everyone to calm the fuck down for a sec. “Let me call a guy.”

“You know a guy?” Steve quipped, grinning. Hey, so long as Peggy approved.

Sam held up one thumb as he dialed the phone number and waited ever so briefly for the other line to pick up. “Ayy, Nick, it’s me. Yeah. Yeah, he’s right here—yeah, so’s she—hah, cool, you two on the same wavelength or what?” Sam handed the phone over—not to Steve, but to Peggy.

“Director Fury,” she breathed soon after, her eyes widening. “Oh, thank god. Yes, I did connect the dots—yes. Yes, he’s being his usual hard-headed s—yes! …oh, wonderful—yes, perfect…”

He winked at Sam as Peggy’s face eventually brightened, her demeanor softening the longer she stayed on the phone. It would be alright. He’d get his job done. Just one more massive charity event in what would be a long, long list.

Though, truth be told—and Steve flushed just thinking about it—

Maybe this event would be the one. Maybe, just maybe, his wildest dreams would finally come true.

Bucky was still out there somewhere. He was sure of it. He could feel it.

And the advertising and promoting for this thing would be massive in scale—with his own name plastered over every inch of it.

Bucky would have to notice. Wherever he was, in whatever corner of the world he’d disappeared into once again.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d get curious. Would realize that there was nothing to fear. Steve had done good for the world, had become a veritable icon of freedom and justice, between his military successes and the philanthropic work he’d accomplished even in just a few short years.

Wouldn’t that make Bucky happy? Or, at the very least, no longer afraid of him?

Not that he’d, ah, done all of this just to entice Bucky into returning. Steve liked to think he was above that sort of petty system abuse.

He just fucking missed his friend, his partner. His beloved. He’d never stopped loving Bucky.

Countless times he’d hoped that that ache in his heart would disappear, or at least mute somewhat in the midst of all his other projects and situations. Only it never had. And right now he felt as though he missed Bucky more than ever. Bucky belonged in this room, right now, with Sam and Peggy. They’d love him, too. He liked to think Bucky would approve of them. Bucky had been a great judge of character in the time Steve had been close to him, hadn’t he?

_Come home, Buck. Just let me see you. Let me know you’re okay._ God, what was happening to him?

It wound up being a pretty long night after all.

* * *

When he came to, he was no longer in New Orleans.

“Morning, James.”  


_Fuck._

“…Pierce?”

Against all odds, that infuriating face had somehow freed itself from the sludge of his memories, only to grin at him in flesh and blood, its eyes in possession of an unsettling coolness. Confidence.

The skyline outside was distinctly that of Washington, D.C., with the pronounced lack of skyscrapers.

…He remembered D.C. Remembered seeing all the monuments, in textbooks. In high school.

_He could remember high school._

“Fuck—”

“Hold still. I really don’t need you getting all riled up. Not right now.”

For a hot minute there was only blinding pain, as his brain seemed to fry itself against his will. Not the punishment-pain—he’d followed the order alright. This was different.

This was his true self, bursting through the manacles he’d so carefully locked into place, far too much to fit into the tiny space he’d designated for it. He craved the room to move, to writhe, to scream—well, scream he did. No one had instructed him not to scream.

_Steve—Steve, I’m here—I’m alive, it’s me—it’s B—_

“Better?” Pierce eventually asked, once his vocal cords had run out of juice, had withered to dust.

He felt wet heat coat his cheeks, could smell his own salt, his own misery. “Why? Why’d you—did you know? When you sent me there, when you—when you took me? Mom, did Mom—” He took a horrid, shuddering breath. _“How did Mom die, Pierce?”_

To his credit, Pierce looked genuinely upset for half a moment. “I’m so sorry, James. It was very sudden—so awful. The shock of finding out you’d gotten in that accident at school—after she’d never truly recovered from losing your father, well. It was too much, I suppose.” He blinked. “It was fast, kid. She didn’t feel a thing.”

_Accident at school—didn’t feel—_

Barnes vomited on the floor.

“Poor thing. Hold still.” Pierce left and returned quickly with a rag, mopping up the sick before tossing it into a bin in the kitchen behind him. “I have to say, I was impressed. Four successful escapees in the history of the institute, and all related to you. Well, yourself plus three more related to you. Yes, we noted Barton’s absence. But I found Brock’s reasoning behind his defection the most fascinating. Tracking him down took a ghastly amount of time and money, I’ll hope you know.”

_Rumlow_ —fuck, Pierce had found Rumlow first, had forced him to—to find him—

“Where is Rumlow,” Bucky croaked. “Is he alive?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of killing your handler,” Pierce replied immediately. “It was tough enough to find someone with the stunted iteration of that synapse mutation, let me tell you. Only nine of the subjects survived the process before we’d really gotten it down to a perfect method—no telling where the others ended up, or if they’d had kids. We got lucky with Brock. Not sure he’d agree with us, but, hey. The sacrifices we all make, to ensure the world becomes a better place…and Agent Rumlow just has that perfect balance of obedience and resolve that lends him _such_ a profound mastery of espionage. I’m sure you understand.”

_The world—?_ And he remembered Nat's research, how she'd pointed Pierce out among the perpetrators behind his Curse— 

“Why’d you make him bring me here,” Bucky half-sobbed, the words dripping from his mouth like saliva.

“Straight to business. You know, I always liked that about you, James. No bullshit. Even now. Good to see your personality stayed intact—surprising, given the abuse I know you’ve suffered, but good. We’ll need Rogers to fall for your winning disposition again if we’re going to pull this off.”

_Rogers._ “Pull what off.”

But he knew. Possibly had known the whole time, since the instant Pierce had come into his vision. His wealthy, charismatic, politically-inclined stepdad, who had always been too gentle, too friendly, too smart. Had frequently mentioned how much he’d just _admired_ —

No—no—nonono—not Steve, not Stevie, not his baby—

“You will kill Steve Rogers for me,” Alexander Pierce commanded, his tone light and pleasant. “You have a month to prepare. He’ll be throwing a three-day affair downtown—live music, a masquerade ball, the works. He’s pulling out all stops to hurt my campaign platform, you see. Not pulling any punches.” He grinned. “You’re helping me fight fire with fire. That’s all.”

_Nononononono_

“Tell me what you are going to do to ensure that Steve Rogers dies by the end of those three nights,” Pierce ordered.

Barnes’ eyes spilled over as his mind went to work, his Red Room training sorting out the logistics for him, newly armed with his freshly returned memories of the long years he’d spent at Steve’s side. Pulling him out of trouble. Bandaging his wounds. Confiding in his friend. Falling in love—

“I’ll need to be alone with him,” the soldier named Barnes pushed out through Bucky’s mouth, formed with his tongue, clutching him and slithering through his veins and enjoying him without his consent. “You don’t want it looking like you ordered his assassination, so you’ll need it to look like an inside job. Like someone close to him did it, for personal reasons, implying a dent in his character, hurting his reputation. It should be… scandalous.” He hated himself, his body, that sack of flesh forcing him to think these things and say those things and— _fuck—_

“A perfect start. I’m happy to provide you with any information you need. No doubt his nonprofit’s website will have a full set of dates and locations. Rumlow can be your eyes and ears—scouting the venue out ahead of time, and so forth.” Pierce smiled. “You will not let Rogers see you until the moment you step foot inside the first ball.”

_No—please—please, don’t—please don’t make me do this—_

“Each night, at the stroke of midnight, you will leave the event and immediately report your progress back to me. You will tell me what you accomplished, what could potentially go wrong the next night, and what you will need to complete your mission.”

No—god damn it, no— _no—_

“Are my instructions clear? Report whether I’ve left anything unclear.”

Bucky actually bit his lips. He felt them redden, felt a bloom of heat emanate forth, only to be dwarfed by the lightning-hot pain of the punishment, as he had taken longer than an instant to comply. Oh, gods, it burned, it _burned_ —eating him alive, inserting white-hot blades into every inch of him, laughing maniacally in his ears—but if he could just—

And Pierce slapped him. Hard, across the face, and Barnes felt his lip split open, a hot second of physical pain that almost matched the punishment-pain. Almost. _“Report.”_

“Your instructions are clear,” he retched out, wishing to god Pierce would end his command to hold still, if only so that he could punch himself in his own motherfucking throat—how could he, how— _how—_

“Wonderful. Now, you need to sit there for thirty more minutes. Brainstorm. Look for holes in your plan, and find ways to fill them. Rumlow will be more than happy to attend to any of your needs; he should be back here any minute. You are not to leave this apartment for any reason, and you are not to uncover any of the windows.”

God, how he burned inside. “Please—no—anything else—anything—”

Pierce squeezed his flesh-shoulder. “I know you and Rogers were more than close, growing up. And I have some idea of how often you were able to get him to be alone with you. I just need you to do it one more time.”

And he was gone, his expensive leather shoes leaving whisper-soft footfalls that quickly faded into silence.

James Buchanan Barnes held still. Plotted. Theorized. Refined his plan of attack, his methods of infiltration and deception. The way he’d need Steve Rogers to look as he bled out, caught-red handed in a shocking state of affairs, literally and figuratively.

Barnes schemed.

Bucky wept.


	9. Chapter 9

_II: Thy Will be Done._

* * *

“Dude, you look good.” Sam considered his suit. “Almost as good as I do!”

“Why do I feel like that’s the greatest compliment I’m ever gonna get from you,” Steve chuckled, fastening his cuff links. Little iron compasses—a gift from Peggy. In return he’d given her girlfriend Angie a free VIP pass, which would get her into the third event’s afterparty. Which Peggy had _finally_ promised she’d attend.

“Just saying. For someone who looks like his pecs are about to rip that dress shirt open, you clean up pretty well.”

“Like you’ve seen me dirty.”

Sam straightened his tie. “Hey, I’ve seen you sweaty.”

“Yeah, from behind. While I leave you in the dust.”

“That’s how it’s gonna be, Rogers? Alright. Alright, I get it.” Sam slapped his ass. _Why does everyone like to do that?_ “You’re gonna kill it tonight.”

“Every dollar’s gotta count. Pierce has constituents who run the entire oil industry, if that gives you any idea of what we’re fighting against.”

“I’m gonna take a shot every time you mention that loser’s name,” Sam replied. “But listen, man. Don’t think about him tonight. Think about all the people you’re doing this for. It’s people like you, and events like this, that keep the States from turning into North Korea. Think about it that way.”

Okay, Steve had to laugh at that. Sam always knew how to get him to pull his head out of his own ass.

“Anyways. You got a date? I could’ve sworn Miss Carter had it for you if I knew she wasn’t bangin’ that actress.”

“Well, you’re not wrong. She’s bi, like me. We, uh, back overseas—”

“On second thought, maybe wait til I’m wasted before you give me the details, man,” Sam cut in.

 _Phew._ “Sounds like a plan.”

Yeah, Bucky would adore Sam. Wouldn’t show it immediately, of course. And never on the surface. But it’d be there.

He fucking prayed that Bucky would be there tonight.

* * *

Rumlow had come home a fucking hour early, ruining Barnes’ plan.

“Don’t do this, man. Untie the rope. _Now._ ”

“Don’t let me do it,” Barnes pleaded to him for the millionth time that day alone. “There’s—there’s gotta be something—please—”

The past month Barnes would have happily traded for five more years in the motherfucking Red Room. Yes. That bad.

Any time not spent rolling on the floor remembering Steve, remembering his baby, had been spent plotting his own ways out, only for the Curse to bite at him until he instead focused his efforts on Pierce’s orders. He had bounced ideas off of Rumlow, had begged, had pleaded, had sobbed.

Rumlow, for his part, commiserated to the best of his ability. Had patiently waited each time as Barnes screamed himself hoarse. Had intervened each time it looked as though Barnes were about to do any physical damage to himself. Had held him, consoled him, cursed Pierce along with him, cursed the world, cursed the Curse.

Presently Rumlow threw his hands up in a motion of surrender. “He’s been on your ass for a month, Barnes. Mine, too. You think I haven’t been trying to find a way out?!” He set his shopping bags on the dark apartment’s granite counter and yanked the rope away from Barnes. “He knows me too well. Knows you way too well.”

“And if I ordered you to kill him?”

“That was the first fucking thing he thought of.” Rumlow began slicing the rope into tiny useless bits, per his interpretation of the orders Pierce had given him. _Keep him alive, keep him sane, keep him healthy, keep him on task._ “We’ve been over this already.”

“I’ve got to break my way out of it, Rumlow. I can’t kill Steve. I _can’t._ I love him. Even if he’s forgotten all about me—fuck, who’m I kidding, he’s—I—“ He shuddered. “God, I fucking love him, I love him to death, I _can’t_ kill him—I can't—”

“…did you drink the rest of my tequila?” Rumlow's eyes widened. “After I commanded you _not to drink the fucking tequila?_ Hell, maybe you did break the—”

“I didn’t drink it,” Barnes cut in. “Not with my mouth.” He had to look accordingly fucked by now.

Rumlow shook his head in a show of near awe. “Well, you’ve gotta sober up by eight. I’m dropping you off at eight-thirty, come hell or high water.”

“Drop me off a cliff.”

“No can do, Barnes.” Rumlow wrapped his long arms around him, kissed the shell of his ear. “Look, I know how much this is hurting you. I can tell. I really can. But there’s not gonna be a way out. Pierce's orders aren't like anyone else's. He's got you hard-wired to obey him, no matter what else anyone'll tell you. For all we know, it's always been that way. You need to accept that, okay?”

 _Need to._ Not an order.

Barnes bellowed into Rumlow’s chest.

“I know. I know, I know, I know…” Rumlow slowly rocked him in place, pressing his mouth to the top of Barnes’ head. If only they could stay that way forever, rather than for a few hours, tops.

Six o’clock inevitably began to roll around, carrying their orders with it.

“Shower. I can join if you want.”

“I want.”

So Rumlow scrubbed his skin, shampooed his hair, carefully shaved his face, and tied his hair back into an elegant braided bun. He spoke in hushed, soothing tones the entire time, trailing kisses along Barnes’ neck, keeping him warmed. Keeping him pliant.

“You wanna put this on?” he asked, pulling the black rosary from Barnes’ pile of dirty clothes. “Pierce wouldn’t care. You will not hurt yourself with it, or use it in any way that could jeopardize the mission.”

At the sight of it, Barnes sucked in a breath, reaching out for the cool ebony beads with both hands. “Please.”

Afterward Rumlow pulled his purchases from that morning out of the gold-embossed shopping bags. “You have to wear this stuff.”

Barnes glared at him. “Then dress me.”

* * *

The suit had been mathematically tailored to form-fit him, somehow irrationally tight without coming off as completely obscene. The sight of his ass in those linen pants had left Rumlow’s mouth watering, he could tell. No underwear in any of the shopping bags. The seams would have left unsightly lines puckering out and ruining the fit, in any case.

Rumlow reached for the dress shirt—cool gray, the fabric flowing and rippling against his shoulders in a way that made him shiver, with a mandarin collar whose top buttons Rumlow pointedly left undone. Patent leather boots that would look appropriate without hindering his running speed. A closely-tailored suit jacket, constructed of matte, stiff fabric that still managed to flatter his broad chest and shoulders. It was disgusting, how perfect he looked. How tantalizing. The most succulent of bait.

He’d gotten Nat to pierce his ears in New Orleans, two holes in each lobe, and had still worn his little steel hoops throughout the entirety of his stay in Pierce’s admittedly posh prison. Rumlow removed those and replaced them with shimmering garnets, one just smaller than the other on each of his ears.

Next came the weapon harness. No pistols tonight; no one held any illusions that Barnes would be able to complete his mission without first assessing the place’s security for the duration of at least one event. Multiple knives were strapped to him, including a Gerber, MK II. Rumlow kissed his throat as he slid the blade into its sheath. “You survived that Trial,” he told Barnes. “You’re gonna make it through this.”

_If Steve doesn’t, then what’s the point?_

Rumlow pulled out a tiny bottle of cologne (JAR, he noted— _fucking hell_ ) and applied two quick bursts of the lightning-scented fragrance to Barnes' neck and wrists, gently rubbing it into his veins. Then two thick, black velvet gloves; one could scarcely detect the hardness of his left hand through the velvet, and could chalk that up to the stiffness of the material. Maybe. Not that he’d be touching anyone that night. Well, hopefully not. No promises.

“It’s a masquerade,” Rumlow reminded him, pulling out the last item from a differently-colored bag. “I picked this one myself. What d’you think?”

The mask was an edgy inversion of the traditional eye-covering masquerade mask; more like a muzzle, starting underneath his jaw and cutting off just before the bridge of his nose. Matte black, it fastened behind his head with an adjustable strap. Somehow the thing breathed perfectly, feeling eerily light against his skin.

“Ah, shit. Forgot a pocket square.” Rumlow shook his head. “Best laid plans…eh. Not like that would make or break your cover… _would it?_ Do people pay attention to that shit? Like I’ve ever attended any crap like this in my life—”

“I have something that could work.” Barnes numbly stepped over to his pile of dirty clothes and fished the handkerchief from the back pocket of his wrinkled jeans. Had it been brand new, the thing would have popped against the black suit and stuck out like a sore thumb; but its sheerness instead made it appear only a slightly lighter shade of gray, an artfully subtle contrast against the dark shirt and vest that Rumlow probably couldn’t have executed if he’d tried.

“Not bad.” Rumlow stepped back to admire his handiwork and whistled. “I know it’s killing you, but this target of yours is one lucky sunuvabitch to get to look at this for four hours.”

“He’d be luckier if he were allowed to live.”

“Ain’t it the truth.” Rumlow kissed his temple. “C’mon. Your carriage awaits.”

* * *

It was all going _swimmingly._ Stark had even put out a fucking red carpet for the VIP ticket holders at Bronze tier and higher.

Which turned out to be genius, marketing-wise; guests on those lists included movie stars, more than one politician (Steve winced at the sight of Senator Stern sliding out from his limousine with a date easily less than half his age), and even dignitaries from foreign nations. All the more reason for even more people to attend on the two subsequent nights; who could guess which celebrities would show up next? 

Several thousand eyebrows lurched skyward as the _King of Norway_ himself stepped down from an honest-to-god draft horse-drawn carriage, a handsome bearded man who’d scandalously begun courting a commoner—well, a commoner who’d earned a Nobel Prize in Physics, emerging next from the carriage in a shimmering midnight gown. The world could be amazing sometimes, Steve mused. Amazing and wonderful and unreal.

Not all guests lingered for the cameras on the red carpet; many had been happy to skip on by, looking to shake the hand of Captain America himself before hitting the dance floor, checking out the open bars, or finding a good spot inside one of the two huge concert chambers at opposite ends of the ballroom.

And one guest abruptly emerged from a matte black town car before trudging down the red carpet without so much as a glance at the cameras. Was it Steve’s imagination, or was this one actually averting his gaze from the photographers? _Who shows up at a charity benefit to not be seen?_ He had to smile at the notion. _I wanna meet this guy._

“Good to see you too,” he graciously replied to the latest guest to have approached him. “Help yourself to hors d’oeuvres. Oh, look, I think Tony Stark just showed up.” The girl actually shrieked in glee and ran off. Impressive, really, given the height of her stiletto heels. In any case, Tony and Pepper’s emergence from an Acura NSX was a welcome distraction; Steve was now solely interested in getting a better vantage point, free from the attentions of his guests. The second floor balcony was starting to look pretty good. _Some fucking host._ Whatever, it’d only be for a few minutes, tops. Honest.

“You alright, Rogers?” Director Fury’s deep voice murmured in his ear. “Lost you for a second.”

“All good. I’m on the second floor. Catching my breath.”

“Good plan. Don’t blow all your energy in the first hour.”

“Roger that.”

Now, where…? Huh. Trust a sulking man all in black to blend way too well into the dimly lit alcoves littered along the ballroom’s high walls. But Steve was a pro. And had twenty-twenty vision. And some kind of thirst.

There. It had taken him a few minutes, but he’d finally spotted the mystery guest, currently leaning against a recessed pillar supporting the opposing balcony. Arms crossed, mouth covered with that interesting mask. Steve hadn’t bothered to wear one, but now he felt a tinge of regret at this decision. Anonymity could occasionally come in handy.

A stray light from the dance floor crossed the guest’s face for a split-second, illuminating the visible upper half of his features. Gorgeous eyes, Steve thought, swallowing. Familiar eyes. Odd. Maybe he knew this guy…?

And it hit him like a sack of bricks. He inhaled sharply, felt his mouth run dry, and swallowed. No. _No way._ That—there was— _no—_

“Rogers, you still with us?”

“Y-yeah.” Steve squeezed his eyes shut and looked again, but to no avail. Not only had the beam of light moved on, but so too had the guest. “Heading back downstairs now.” _I’ve got to find him—_

He’d had Bucky’s eyes. That much was clear. And those same broad shoulders he had spotted in San Antonio, all those years ago.

 _Maybe he'd developed a taste for working out._ Heh.

Well, it’d explain why the guest had been so stealthy. Maybe Bucky really had come to see Steve, just to look at him, to see how he was doing, and would leave soon after. 

That was a sobering thought. Steve nearly tripped on the stairwell. _No._ He needed to find him. Needed to say something. Anything. He needed to know that it really was him, after all this time. One look would never have been enough, he realized with a jolt. He needed more.

“You’re back in sight,” Fury whispered in his ear. “Wilson’s gonna bring you a drink. Relax.”

“Do I not look relaxed?”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

And Steve honestly had no clue how to reply to that. Luckily Sam appeared just then.

“Am I the only one who noticed that the king of entire country of Norway showed up?” he asked under his breath, handing Steve a glass of what smelled like bourbon on the rocks. Bless the man.

“Judging by the crowds around him? No.” Steve downed the drink in one gulp, earning a flabbergasted look from Sam.

“I thought you couldn’t get drunk, man.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a tragedy.” Steve wiped his mouth. “You seen a guest walking around in a dark suit? Longish brown hair tied back in a bun?”

“Uh, no. I’ll keep an eye out, though. You think he’s up to no good?”

Steve shook his head. “I want to meet him.”

“If you say so. Hey, Stark’s waving to you.”

The next few hours were a blur of bemusement and anxiety, of hope and despair, all intermingled into a cocktail far more potent than anything he could ever have ordered from the bar. Steve kept swearing he could glimpse the guest out of the corner of his eye, only to jerk the rest of his head in the man’s direction and find only thin air.

How could Bucky torture him like this?

If it really was Bucky under that eerie mask. Hell, for all he knew, Peggy and Fury had been dead on regarding his safety at the three events, and this was actually an assassin hired to kill him. _It'd serve me right, for not taking them seriously enough._

At long last the flow of guests that had lined up to meet him stemmed and ran dry. The majority of the crowds had either dispersed into the concert halls, the dance floor and adjacent bars, or had left for the night. Eleven p.m. struck, according to both his wristwatch and the towering brass clockface inlaid into the high wall behind the DJ. Steve stretched and headed back up toward that balcony. "Taking a break," he whispered to Fury.

But the balcony's expansive view was what he desired even more than the privacy. One more hour to find the guy, and then he'd either have to give up on all hope of ever seeing the man again, or—

“You look like you need a drink.”

_Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy—_

“A drink sounds amazing right now, honestly,” Steve replied to the shadow-ensconced figure, feeling a peculiar burning sensation in his throat. “You enjoying your evening?”

The masked guest crossed his arms over the balcony railing, leaning forward in a way that showed off the immaculate silhouette of his lean legs. And other, less-lean things. “It’s an impressive event. I'm glad I came.”

 _That makes two of us._ Steve mimicked the motions, if only to disguise whatever was happening with his crotch right then. _Christ._ “Hey, uh, thanks. This cause is really important to me, or I’d just have let Stark be the host. I’m really not much of a partying type.”

“I figured. You seem happier when distanced from your guests.”

Steve shrugged. “Maybe not all of my guests.” _Way too smooth, you fucking meatball._

And the black-suited man turned in place, leaning back against the railing, his arms still crossed. Up close, those steely eyes were another goddamn level of distracting. Steve would all too happily let himself drown in them for the next hour. "Gotta say, I'm flattered."

 _Good._ “Tell you what. If I go down to get drinks, will I still find you here once I come back?”

The man’s gaze met his for a split second. “Your wish is my command, Captain.”

 _Very good._ “Then I _command_ you to wait here 'til I come back.”

And he scooted off, too busy focusing on keeping his cock tamed to remember to ask the poor guy what he’d prefer to imbibe. _Dumbass dumbass dumbass._

“Status, Cap.”

“Erect. … _Jesus Christ,_ I said that out loud. What is happening. Why. _Why—_ ”

“Mercy. Just don’t get caught,” Fury chortled. “I’m hoping to hell that you at least nabbed a private room first—”

“I am _not_ banging a _guest_ at a _charity ball,_ ” Steve hissed under his breath—admittedly, it was far more an order to himself than it was an assertion for Fury. “Rogers _out._ ”

“Out is right.”

God, if Steve _ever_ met the man in person—

After groaning in resignation, Steve ordered two glasses of red wine without thinking and put in a solid effort to greet everyone with whom he made eye contact on his way back. Smiled for cameras. Exchanged eye-rolls with Peggy, before she dipped her gorgeous dancing partner out of his line of sight.

Miraculously, his new favorite guest had not budged an inch from his position against the railing the whole time Steve had been gone. He gingerly accepted the thin-stemmed wine glass before turning back around to lean forward over the railing alongside Steve.

“Could I ask you for your name?”

The man blinked. “Sebastian…Winter.”

Steve tried not to choke. _Gonna call bullshit on that one._ But he humored the guest nonetheless. “It’s a pleasure, Sebastian.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.” He seemed to consider his own words for a moment. “I’d ask you for yours…”

“If I were anybody else.” Wow. _When did I turn into such a douchebag?_

Steve irately sipped from the wine glass. Merlot, the precise shade of his new friend’s lovely earrings. _Bucky had always wanted earrings._ But this guy couldn’t be Bucky. Bucky would never have come up with that shitty of a cover name, even in the highly-contrived event that he’d want to disguise himself.

Still, he was far preferable company to the thousands of crazed dancers below. “Thanks for coming out tonight. You live in D.C.? Or did you fly in?”

“Currently D.C., yeah.” It was eerie, the similarities between the man’s voice and what he’d remembered of Bucky’s. Velvety, lilting. Thin-edged. “Yourself?”

“Yep. My roommate’s here, actually. He's been a networking powerhouse this whole time; wouldn't be here today without him. We’re not too far from the Hill.” 

“The traffic must be disgusting.”

“Luckily I don’t drive much,” Steve countered, grinning. No doubt the wine had reddened his lips a tad. He tapped his own left breast. “Too much Brooklyn in here, maybe. What line of work are you in, Sebastian?”

“I work at…the docks.” Was it Steve’s imagination, or did his new friend look positively disgusted with himself?

“No kidding? Are you a fisherman, or…?”

“I fix machinery. Engines, mostly.”

Steve nodded, imagining the guy hunched over scraps of metal with a soldering iron, sparks flying, beads of sweat running down his throat...oof. “Huh. That’s cool. I’ve always wanted a boat. Maybe a side effect of too much time in the desert…after a while you hate straying too far from the sea.”

“Man was never meant to stray from coast,” Sebastian murmured, gazing into his wineglass. “Lest we become like Midwesterners.”

Steve cracked up. And wanted to cry. _Bucky’s totally said that exact same thing before._ “Hey, uh. I gotta ask—have we met before?”

Sebastian’s eyelids drooped ever so slightly, those steel-colored eyes masked by thick dark eyelashes. God, this guy... “Possibly. How long’ve you lived in the area?”

“Three years, now. Not sure I’ll ever really be used to it. I miss Brooklyn something awful.” He drained his glass. “May just have to move back when this is all over.”

His new friend nodded. “I get that. What do you miss about it the most?”

Oh, boy. Now or never. “Real talk—I had an amazing friend there. I was closer to him than anybody else I’ve ever known. We actually met when we were kids, in middle school. The first time I ever talked to him was the day his dad died—yeah. It was awful, how sad he looked. All I wanted in the whole universe was to get him to stop crying. To make him happy.” The edges of his mouth quirked upward at the memory. “The next thing I know, he’s at my house every day. When I’m not at his. Everything just…” He shook his head, shrugging. “Life just made sense, back when he was in it. Seemed it went all to hell the instant he left.”

Sebastian regarded him through the corners of his eyes. “What happened to your friend?”

 _Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You’re a grown man at the most expensive party in the country. You’re gonna power through this or die trying._ Fuck, he’d been more composed when insurrectionists had been lobbing grenades his way overseas.

“His mom said he’d just...gone off to college,” Steve murmured, feeling his voice break. “Just like that. Out of nowhere—sneaking into my high school to visit me one day, gone the next. Haven’t heard from him in…god, it’s been years.” He shot Sebastian a quick glance. “All I want is to know that he’s doing okay.”

Sebastian’s glass was noticeably still full. He hadn’t yet removed his mask. “In all honesty, your friend sounds like a dick for leaving out of nowhere like that, and you should forget about him.”

Steve should have taken offense to that. Should have fought back. He’d poured his heart out to this stranger, a stranger who’d paid possibly hundreds of dollars to come see him—just for the guy to shoot him down in his moment of clear vulnerability.

But all he could think was that _Bucky would totally have said that._

He finally opened his mouth to retort when Sebastian abruptly glanced up at the enormous brass clock face behind the dance floor. _Midnight._

“Gotta go. Thanks for the drink.” He handed the untouched glass back to Steve, who bemusedly accepted it with a limp hand, not quite processing what was happening. “See ya later.”

And he was gone, melted away into the shadows.

_…fuck._

It was him. It was _so_ him.

“Later, Buck,” Steve murmured to himself, relishing that familiar warmth pooling in his core.

* * *

“Mission report.”

“…Security has been canvassed. One officer in a security booth on the third floor has a wire on him. Two guards at each entrance, only taser batons. Eight roaming agents inside, pistols. Their routes are easy enough to remember, and there are gaps.”

“Were you able to get him alone?”

“Not completely. But he’s shown no resistance to straying away from the eyes of the guards.”

“Good. Keep on him. Return here tomorrow at the same time, whether you’ve managed to complete your mission by then or not. Rumlow, take him back to safehouse.”

“Sir.”

Sixteen minutes later, “If you command me to arrive at the event at the correct time, I have to do so. You understand, right?”

“Where’s this going, Barnes.”

“I need you to call this number.”

“…Will this interfere with your mission?”

“No. It’s Nat. Could you call her? Just, just talk to her?”

“Why.”

“She’ll be able to tell you.”

“…alright. But this had better not fuck anything up. For your sake.”

Silence, save for the rush of traffic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incidentally insulted over the course of this chapter: Steve, Bucky, Sam, Pierce, certain pre-TFA Stucky fic tropes, Chris Evans, myself, and the most expensive perfume on the planet. It's like a game of _I Spy._


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

“Do you understand what you’re doing?!”

“I don’t think about what I’m doing,” Barnes replied. He continued to polish his pistols—a COP-357 and an Intratec TEC-38, small and sleek. 

“If I do this, then I can’t drive you,” Rumlow explained slowly. “If I don’t drive you, then how are you gonna get there?”

“I’ll take the subway.”

“The fucking _Metro?_ Barnes. Ten million different things could go wrong. There’s no fucking way you’re gonna make it unscathed.”

“If you order me to show up at a certain place at a certain time, then I’ll have to,” Barnes reiterated for the ninth time that hour.

Rumlow howled. “I hate you sometimes, you know that?”

“I think I know.”

“Pierce is gonna burn me in half. I’m gonna get burnt in half. For you. I hope you realize that.”

"You know this is our only way out. You know what you need to do. What I can't do."

Rumlow kneaded his temples. “Fine. I may not make it back in time for tomorrow’s, either, I hope you realize. Can you dress yourself? No, fuck that, _you’re going to dress yourself._ You are going to dress yourself the same way I dressed you yesterday. Only items from the bags. And the weapons harness, and the guns.” His face softened. “And... that necklace thing. And that rag you like.”

“Understood.” He put the gun down on the table, strode up to Rumlow, and kissed up into his mouth. He had no way to gauge how much time passed, with that wet heat pouring into him and setting his whole body aflame. Rumlow moaned, tightening his grip on Barnes’ ass one last time.

“Do it. And don’t fuck it up. I'm not gonna let Pierce shred you, not even for this guy.” And he was gone, stomping out of the apartment in a holy rage.

And so Barnes cleaned himself and donned the new suit, tucking the folded translucent pocket square into the newer jacket, its lapels in curious angles reminiscent of shark fins, and purchased a rail pass. It was crowded as hell, sure, but no worse than Brooklyn’s had ever been. At least the long commute gave him time to think.

Seeing Steve had been—unreal. Unbelievable. That same sweet kid, in that same massive body that had chased after him in San Antonio.

_He still knew me, even then._

Steve had always been gorgeous to him. Had been a cute, hot-blooded thing, no matter how hard he’d willed to come off as tough and prickly to the others. Bucky’s tiny, scrappy tornado of a lover.

And it was still so, unbelievably, undeniably Steve in this new body, this lithe Renaissance sculpture masquerading as a mortal. He’d even apparently figured out how to trim his hair properly. And he’d looked like a god damn prince, up there in that beautiful ballroom in that stunning Gucci suit, a hint of a script tattoo peeking from behind his loose collar, his dog tags tucked into his shirt and highlighting the tantalizing crease at his sternum. Barnes gave a great shuddering sigh.

 _Vita Rays,_ Pierce had explained. _Shooting from afar won’t do. Poisoning won’t do. You’ll need to get him alone, out of sight, and make it deep. He’ll need to bleed out._  


_Fuck._ Barnes fought the urge to retch in that subway, fought the too-hot desire to get off one stop early and hurl himself in front of an oncoming— _argh._ The Curse punished him for contemplating breaking Pierce's orders. _Fuck me—_

Instead Barnes silently fingered the rosary under his shirt, praying for Steve with each successive bead.

* * *

“I know it was him, Peg. No one else would make me feel like that. He’s changed a little, yeah. Something’s definitely up with him. We’ve got to—got to get him alone, got to ask him what’s happened—”

“Pull yourself together,” Peggy groaned, kneading her temples. “You’ve got to be out there in thirty minutes and you look godawful—”

“On your feet, soldier,” Nick Fury’s unmistakable voice boomed. The man himself closed the hotel room’s door behind him, his long black coat swishing as he stepped. To say he looked displeased would be one hell of an understatement.

“He didn’t sleep at all last night,” Sam muttered. “Wouldn’t shut up about his new friend. Old friend. We’re not too sure.”

Fury raised his one visible eyebrow, his lips curling. “This the same _friend_ that had you all riled—”

“That friend,” Steve quickly intercepted. As though Peggy could miss that message.

“Steve.”

“Don’t.”

_“Steve.”_

“Please, Peg. Not now. Later. Please. I’m begging you.”

Fury strode into the suite's massive bathroom and turned on the tub's faucet. “Director, you planning on taking a bubble bath?” Sam called.

“In here, Rogers. Now.”

Steve moaned and followed him in. “What?”

“Stick your feet in the water. Now.”

“Wh—why?”

“ _Do it,_ soldier.”

And that was how Steve walked across the red carpet thirty minutes later, looking less like a half-rotted zombie and altogether more like he’d just snorted a bump or three, eyes shining and three-hundred-watt smile beaming against his own will. His guests responded all too well to his apparent enthusiasm and gleefully took selfie after selfie with their handsome host. 

“We'll be lucky if he makes it through tonight in one piece,” Peggy breathed through her own smile. “That said, getting Fury on board was a smart move, Sam. I can't thank you enough for arranging this.”

“Let's just hope Rogers will do what I asked and stay where we can keep an eye on him,” Sam muttered as he pulled up alongside her, wrapping one finely-suited arm around her waist as they posed for the cameras. “We should also keep a look out for that dude who freaked him out. Last thing we need right now is to be thrown off our game by some doppelgänger.”

“Let’s both hope it’s a doppelgänger,” Peggy laughed dryly.

Ten o'clock had passed by the time she spotted the man in question, his back to the wall and engulfed completely in shadow. Peggy had nearly reached him when a stunning redhead in a spider-shaped mask beat her to the finish line, hiding their faces behind the languid flourishing of a lacy black fan. _So he’s not alone._ Peggy planted herself on the other side of a marble column and strained her ears.

“Status?” she could just barely hear the redhead murmur. “Also, you look pretty damn good.”

“Nat?” Steve’s man replied in a soft voice. “How’d you get here?”

“Flew in this morning—”

“That ID you forged made it through TSA?” 

_Well, now._ Peggy crossed her arms. _Strike one._

“Clint and I have been worried sick,” she heard the redhead hiss. “He paid for the tickets with his own money, Barnes.”

 _Barnes._ Peggy’s heart thudded along in her chest. So Steve hadn't been delusional...

“Wait, Clint’s here too?”

“Of course he’s here. So is Lucky. Clint wouldn’t leave him behind.”

“What—but I thought you flew—”

“Clint feigned blindness at the airport to pass off Lucky as an assistance animal. It was pretty impressive, actually.”

“No shit. Trust Clint to—”

”Were you kidnapped? Was it Pierce? _Has he hurt you?_ ”

Peggy sucked in a breath. Any mention of Pierce was absolutely worth mentioning to Fury. But— _kidnapped…?_ Oh, the absolute minute that Steve got wind of this—

“Pierce got Rumlow to track me down. I never saw it coming—Pierce gave me the orders as soon as I woke up. Gave me a month to prepare for this. Wouldn’t let me leave the apartment the whole time. I was trapped. Me 'n Rumlow tried to figure a way out, we thought of everything, but—I figured our last shot was to get him to find you, so I took advantage of a loophole yesterday, gave him your number—”

“Which is why I'm here," the redhead finished for him. "What did Pierce order you to do?” The knife-edge of her query chilled Peggy to the core.

“Guess,” he spat, the disgust in his voice overweighed only by what Peggy could have mistaken for pain.

“To kill your friend—Barnes, I _told you_ it was him—but why?”

Peggy’s jaw dropped. No. _No,_ this was—kidnapped or no, if what he said was true—

“Some political thing. Steve's hurting his reputation by trying to make INSIGHT public. But Nat—Nat, he killed my mom.” The sound of the man’s voice breaking nearly did Peggy in. “Right after he sent me to the Red Room. Nat, he was my stepdad—he had this planned the whole time. For all I know he arranged for my dad's death back when I was twelve. I—I’m just a weapon to him, Nat. He’s made sure of it. And he’s gonna make sure anyone else who knows me will die, too. I know it.”

_No…what on Earth…?_

“No loopholes for this order, though? None?”

When the man responded, his voice came out wrecked. Ragged. “I’ve tried,” he sobbed. “Like I said, we—me 'n Rumlow tried—looked for every possible—it’s like he knew—he got inside my head and just—he’s—”

“Hush. Don’t be seen crying. Here. Hold still.”

All Peggy had to do was alert Fury, and they could remove Steve from the building. It would be that easy. This man had been given a mission, and she could be the one to see that he failed.

But something about all of this sounded horribly, horribly _off._ She needed more information. This had not been the voice, nor words, of a callous mercenary. This was a friend, one in a great deal of pain, and seemingly trapped in a situation that warranted far more of an investigation than perhaps anyone else on her team would realize.

Eventually the redhead continued to speak. “Did he give you a time limit?”

“Yes.”

“Is it tonight?”

“No. I'm gonna fight it, til the last second, if I have to.”

Both Peggy and the redhead sighed in relief at the same time.

“But listen, Barnes." The redhead's— _Nat's_ voice had sharply increased in volume. "There’s a fix to all of this. Rumlow’s on his trail right now.”

“On whose trail?”

“Someone who can break the curse.”

_“What?!”_

Peggy nearly laughed. _The hell?_

And then a blood-curdling screech rang through the ballroom, drowning out even the thumping ballroom speakers.

Peggy glanced toward the source of the shriek. One of the guests, a teenaged girl, pointing—up? At the shadowed balcony. Where Steve was standing—legs spread in a fighting stance—with a woman in a navy gown holding a knife to his throat—Steve’s hands around her wrists, keeping the blade’s edge at bay with what looked to be all of his strength—the red five-pointed star tattoo on her deltoid pulsing as she leaned into him with all of hers—

 _“Dottie?”_ Peggy bellowed, her heart icing over. _No—please—not you—_

As though Dottie had heard her (Had she? From all the way up there?!), she immediately pulled away from Steve and leapt over the balcony. Landed neatly on her feet. Rushed straight toward Peggy, pulling a second knife from a thigh holster beneath the slit of her gown.

Steve was alright, Peggy processed in that instant. Horrified, clearly, but alive. Not bleeding. Not dying.

And so Peggy could play.

Dottie had clearly not expected Peggy to smoothly dodge her frontal jab, accidentally lodging her left knife into the marble column where Peggy had stood half a moment before. She crouched low and unstrapped her pistol just as Dottie kicked out, knocking the weapon away.

“All units to the ballroom,” she barked into her wire. “Assailant is still at large! On the double—ah!”

Three swift jabs nearly made contact with Peggy’s throat and chest as Peggy whirled away, keeping on the defensive. Fury’s officers had three seconds to figure out what was happening—two—one—

Dottie feinted a slice to her thigh and pulled back to jab at her heart when Peggy’s fist finally made contact with the side of her head. _Damn,_ that woman’s skull was hard. Blood trickled from Peggy's knuckles.

“Forgot that you’d been a fighter,” Dottie quipped, stumbling back as she clutched her head. “ _That’s_ gonna sting in the morning.”

“Dottie, _why?_ ” Peggy’s hands bunched into fists. “Who wants Rogers dead? How could you—”

“Not at liberty to say,” Dottie growled, lunging forward with a knee strike. But Peggy had been ready, had banked hard to her left and managed to land one fist on Dottie’s shoulder. _"Yeow."_

But Peggy landed only a few more hits before misstepping. Dottie was fast, unreasonably fast, already latching onto Peggy’s outstretched hand and twisting her into a rock-solid hold.

“Argh—let go—”

“Not bad, Peg,” Dottie hummed into her ear, her voice uncharacteristically ragged. Raw. Breaking. “Sorry it has to end like this. I’ll give Angie your best.”

And the next thing Peggy knew was a red, red mass of pain in her side, hot and spurting as she slid to the hard ballroom floor. _Steve had better be out of here by now,_ was her last conscious thought.

And to think that they hadn’t even gotten to dance.

* * *

“Makes sense,” Nat had whispered while eyeing the assailant’s movements. “Rumlow had gone missing, Pierce couldn’t trust you. So he covered his blind spot.”

Underwood had _graduated,_ Barnes remembered idly from one of Nat’s story nights. Had made top marks in everything, had gotten her tattoo. Had left to join the General Population. To pass as one of them. To wait.

“In pursuit of Rogers,” the blonde barked into her shimmering diamond bracelet as one, two, three armed guards approached. One, two, three guards halted in their tracks and crumpled onto the floor, blood streaming from their knees.

“Like hell you are,” Nat called, lunging forward.

And it was the Red Room all over again, with gowns and heels in place of gray uniforms and boots. The efficiency, the careful judgment of space and time and trajectory, the horrid cracks of elbows hitting ribs, of blade meeting blade. Nat twisted and ducked until no bullets remained in the pistol the blonde had picked up off the floor. The fight took them to all corners of the ballroom, now largely devoid of guests. Nat had brilliantly worn one of her favorite stolen gowns, a burgundy halter-topped one-piece with pockets and billowing pant legs that passed for skirts otherwise. She jabbed with her knees as often as her elbows, somehow spinning effortlessly on spike heels and catching Dottie's knife in her fan before wresting it away.

Barnes had pulled out one of the pistols from his harness, but the two women simply moved too fast. His training, and therefore expertise, had been in sniping average humans—moving targets in vehicles with steady pacing or acceleration—definitely not Red Room agents who jumped and ducked and dodged like so much wind and shadow. If he took aim and fired and missed—hit Nat, or a civilian—no. _No._ Not an option.

The command was for him to kill Steve. He had to save his weapons. Had to wait.

But an instant later he spotted Clint, who had found a good perch on the complete opposite end of the ballroom—literally. Second-floor southwest alcove, tucked up into the ceiling. He’d have a great view even through that mask of his, purple and with a bird’s beak for a nose.

 _Nat is trying to distract her,_ Bucky signaled in ASL. _Do you have a gun?_

He could just barely make out Clint’s signed response once he squinted, before Clint pulled out an auto-unfolding mechanism from the folds of his overcoat.

 _Not a gun,_ he'd replied, smirking.

 _“Argh,”_ Nat suddenly bellowed as the blonde thrust a knife into her shoulder.

“NAT!” Barnes yelled, effectively gaining attention of both of the women. Just for a split second. Just long enough.

And an arrow had become lodged in the blonde’s knee. And another, in her shoulder. A third, at the joint of her hip.

“Fuck, don’t let her get away—!” Nat staggered forward, still clawing at the knife in her sternum.

But Underwood was a product of the Red Room through and through—gone before Bucky could even process the trajectory and speed of her leap through a high window—

“Nat’s hurt!” he shouted in Clint’s direction, unholstering his Intratec. “I’m in pursuit.”

He hurled himself through the window after her, rolling into a defensive position over the shattered glass, then checked the ground for telltale drops of blood—there. _Good._ One arrow further down the trail, then the second, the third—then the edge of a building, overlooking the busy street below. _Fuck—_

Too many fucking gaps in the street lights. Too many fucking shadows.

Gone.

Barnes punched the wall with his metal fist, screaming internally.

No way in hell Rogers hadn’t gone to ground. No way in hell Barnes would ever see him again, much less trap him alone in an unguarded area.

Yet at the same time, Bucky felt abysmally happy. _Steve got out. Steve survived..._

...for the time being. He gritted his teeth, knowing all too well that Pierce would simply change his plan, would find someone else to take out Rogers at a later date. He'd either return Barnes to the Red Room, or, well. The nicer option would involve a few bullets.

All because of the second assassin Pierce had felt the need to call in. All because he’d scrambled their plan, and on a whim.

He could just go ahead and stab himself, really. Cut to the chase.

But Pierce had _fucking_ ordered him to stay alive through the course of the three _fucking—_

_“Sebastian?!”_

Barnes whipped around. _Christ in hell—_

“You’re still here,” he breathed, not believing his eyes.

Rogers raised the window of his room by another foot and poked his head through. “C’mere.”

Well, no way to fight that. Barnes approached him, finding no reason to stifle the smile growing steadily across his face when Rumlow's mask would do that for him. “Are you hurt?”

“No. She was good, but Peggy distracted her before she could finish me off. Another few seconds, maybe, and I might’ve…” Steve trailed off, shrugging, his mouth a severe line. “I’m fine. But were any other guests hurt? Fury’s agent’s won’t tell me anything. It’s a nightmare.”

“Ambulances pulled up as I was leaving,” Barnes recalled. “Two women were stabbed, and three security guards were shot in their legs. And she got away.” _Thanks to me…thanks to my freezing up like a—like a coward._

“Shit,” Steve hissed, covering his face with one hand. “No—no, this isn’t— _how_ could I have let this happen?!” His voice had grown ragged, and wet. “This was a huge mistake. I never should’ve—I never—”

Barnes swallowed. _No,_ he wanted to tell Stevie, _no, please, don’t cry—don’t cry, sweetheart—_

“Here,” he said instead, fishing the handkerchief from his breast pocket. “You didn’t think you had any enemies?”

“I…” Steve shuddered, wiping at his eye with the thin cloth. “I fucking knew people would be pissed—Peggy told me, she fucking told me something like this would happen, and I didn’t—I didn’t listen, I was stupid, this whole damn thing was stupid—“

“It’s not stupid,” Barnes cut in. “It’s incredibly brave. They’re gonna keep trying to fight you, you know. Til they get what they want.” He crossed his arms. “But if it’s important enough to you, I think you should keep fighting back. Don’t let these people's sacrifices be for nothing. Know what I mean?”

Steve blinked, droplets of tears collecting on the ends of those marvelous golden eyelashes. “I—you think we should keep going? But if more people get hurt—if—I don’t think I could—”

“People know what the risk is, now,” Barnes answered. Years of text flashed through his eyes, storybooks with heroes and villains and hard-earned victories, and morals. Child’s play. “They can guess what might happen. Your security team will be that much wiser, will be better prepared. You could make a press conference addressing what happened, how you'll be ready for the final event, no matter what. You're in this, til the end of the line."

 _There._ The barest hint of a smile. _That's my baby._

He kept going. "Even if no other guests show up, the fact that you refuse to back down, well. It’ll send a message. But something tells me that you're not gonna be alone tomorrow." He squeezed Steve's hand ever so lightly. 

And Steve looked at him then, for the longest time yet. Unblinking, unmoving.

_Does he know?_

“Hey…thanks.” Steve blinked, once, twice. Nodded. “I mean it. Thanks for—for sticking around. I’m glad you’re alright.” He held out the kerchief. “Thanks for this, too.”

Barnes instead folded Steve’s fingers back over the damp cloth. “Hold onto it for a while. Just in case.”

Steve inhaled slowly, the blood clearly beginning to drain from his face. “How…how long’s a while?”

“However long you need,” Barnes replied as he turned away. Walked away. Nimbly dropped down into the alleyway below, giving himself into the sounds of traffic and ambulance sirens and the buzzing of fretful conversation.

Because he knew better than to listen for what exactly Steve had shouted then. Knew better than to look back, to see that pretty mouth forming one word. _Wait._

Even if he inherently knew what Steve had commanded of him, well. He could wait while doing other things, in other places, with other people. Plain unadulterated _Wait_ was simply too vague. Was its own nested loophole. How he had loved those as a child. How he had missed them.

In the meantime, other places beckoned. Other people awaited him.

He was multitasking.

* * *

He hardly felt the slap across his face. Could barely detect the trickle of blood from his mouth.

“Not only is your mission an utter failure,” Pierce uttered coolly, “but you may have just cost me the entire election. You have the next five minutes to explain yourself. And not one second longer.”

 _Bite me,_ Barnes wished he could have mouthed off just then. Not an option, though. Well, maybe. It had become increasingly tougher to tell.

“Turn on the television,” he replied instead. Five minutes would be far more than enough to suffice.

Pierce’s eyebrows jetted skyward, but he humored him nonetheless. A feature-length movie channel had popped onto the screen, at the moment airing one of the uncountable Cinderella remakes. If memory served him right, this one involved ogres, and a foolish fairy, and some type of terrible, stupid spell.

“Pull up a news channel. Any news channel.”

Away Pierce clicked.

And there was Steve Rogers, alive, unharmed, coated in a layer of camera flashes and in another of sweat. “Could you please clarify?” a reporter was asking.

Pierce leaned in, his cold eyes wide. _Good._

“I will _not,_ ” Steve announced toward the central camera, toward Pierce, toward Barnes, “go into hiding. Not now, not tomorrow. One more night of the benefit remains, and I plan to continue hosting. Some amazing people have traveled from all over the country—all over the world—to help defend and sustain this cause. They know how important this is. They know what’s at stake.” He took a deep breath, wiping his eyes with a familiar piece of cloth. “We can’t drop everything and give up—not just because some coward behind INSIGHT is upset that I’m still breathing.”

 _Now that's the little punk I know,_ Bucky thought, close to smiling. Too close. _You tell 'em to fuck off, Stevie._

And the whole screen went white for a solid few seconds as the press and photographers collectively lost their shit.

But Pierce had clearly seen enough. He snapped the television off, turned around. Smiled. Barnes did not particularly like that smile, no, he never had.

_Play with me, Pierce. Give me my time frame._

With Dottie out of commission from her arrow wounds, Barnes would be the only threat against Steve. And Barnes would have skipped town with Clint and Nat, would have met up with Rumlow, would have let the punishment-pain eat him alive, until Rumlow brought him to this mystery Curse-breaker. Would have ended this, cleanly, quietly, disappearing off the grid, even if it meant Rumlow had to drag him.

Steve would live through that night, was the important thing. And once free from that mutation's hold, Bucky swore he would return, would come clean about everything to Steve. Would protect his baby from these bullies and their fists. Would dress his sweetheart's wounds. Just like old times.

“Well done,” Pierce proclaimed, giving him a slight nod of the head. “But you understand that he may well go to ground the minute that ball is over. Failing your mission is still not an option. You will kill Steve Rogers by midnight, and report back to me immediately afterward.”

“Understood.” It was in the bag.

“And we’ll have Dottie patched up and back in action,” Pierce continued. “To ensure your success.”

Barnes felt his heart plummet into his gut. No. No no no no _no—_

“She was the one who jeopardized the mission,” he hissed. “She failed to make the hit, and then attacked a different person for no reason—it _looked_ like an assassination, not a—”

“Dottie did as she was told,” Pierce replied, his mouth a hard line. “Dottie did not ask her handler to leave the city. Dottie did her best to complete her mission, and then did what she could to take out the one witness who could recognize her—the one person who could have put our entire operation in jeopardy. Dottie follows her orders. Just as you will.”

And Barnes had no response. He could only grind his teeth, could only punch himself mentally. Repeatedly. Forever.

“We’ll find her some different prosthetics. Security won’t know know what’ll hit them.” He frowned. “They may pat you down for guns, however. We’ll need to plant something else on you. I’m thinking one knife should do the trick.” He cast a glance toward Barnes’ left arm. “Perhaps it’s best this way.”

Fuck. Fuck no. No. _No._

Everything he’d set up—ruined.

_God damn it—_

“Once again: tomorrow, you will arrive at the event at the scheduled time. You will get Steve Rogers away from his security detail, and you will kill him, leaving the scene looking as we discussed previously. You will leave at the stroke of midnight and return here, to confirm that you have accomplished your mission.” Pierce smiled. “Dismissed.”

Everything, everything he’d done. All for nothing.

_Steve—_

Barnes nodded numbly. Exited the room.

Bucky thrashed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I s2g [this jacket](http://36.media.tumblr.com/388338ec4e8085ec52f40a4bbf1608ae/tumblr_njhjvbUXvY1to9uimo1_250.jpg) has to make a cameo in all of my fics whether I want it to or not


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

“Hey, sailor,” Nat murmured as he walked into her hospital room. “How’d it go?”

“No shit, I thought you’d be dead by now,” Clint added unceremoniously. “Glad to see you’re still kicking.”

“Glad you're the one still kicking,” he replied toward Nat before relaying the details of his meeting with Pierce.

Nat gaped at him, the slackening of her jaw matching the sickly clouding of her eyes.

“Fuck—that’s—” Clint punched the wall, shaking his head. “But—listen. Barnes. You can’t let that stop your plan now. Rumlow found the guy. We got a call from him right before you walked in—he’s on his way back now, coming to pick us up. He could pick up all of us. He’ll be here at six.”

Barnes shook his head, feeling his hands beginning to shake. “No. I can’t just leave Rogers to deal with her. She’s taken him on once already—she’s not going to mess up this time. I can’t let it happen.” He gritted his teeth. “I’m staying, and I’m making sure she doesn’t hurt him.”

“So that you can kill him instead.”

“Or die trying.”

_“Barnes—”_

“And neither of you can stop me,” he added. “ _You_ are in no shape to walk, much less fight. And _you_ can’t leave her alone here,” he said to Clint. “It’s too dangerous. Someone could find out about her Curse, could take advantage of it.” And that was all he had to say. Clint was fiercely protective of Nat to a fault; no matter how small the risk, it would never be one he could bring himself to take.

Done deal.

“God damn it, Barnes, _please_ don’t do this,” Nat hissed. “We have a way out. Put some faith in Rogers. He can take Underwood, and the two of us will be free of the curse long before midnight. And Pierce won’t be able to find you. We could leave the feds an anonymous tip! I could post everything that I’ve found on the internet, in one big package—”

“Nat,” he croaked, shaking his head. “It’s not going to happen. I was the one who persuaded Steve to not cancel the third night. His death is on my hands, now matter how it happens.” He wiped one eye with the back of his hand. “I can't let him do this alone. I can't leave him. I don't—I don't want to.”

“What the hell—” Nat groaned in exasperation, so loudly that her monitors shook.

“Let me do this, Nat. Please. Let me be with my friend one last time. Get your Curse cured.” He placed his hand on her folded ones, clutched Barton’s shoulder in the other. “I’m not asking.”

Nat nodded, her face swimming in tears. Clint cursed, scowled, punched him in the stomach. And let him go. “Watch yourself out there, Barnes. No matter what happens, you should try to find us afterward. We’ll wait for you. Lucky misses his favorite chew toy.”

Barnes grinned at his two—his—his friends. Yes, that sounded right. Felt right.

“Be well,” he told them, and he meant it.

* * *

He nearly made it to the elevator at the end of the hospital wing when a familiar voice called to him.

“Come here, Bucky.”

_The hell…?_

But he had to follow the order. And so he turned in place, began to walk, headed through the open door and into an ICU room, his heart threatening to burst from his chest.

But he knew the speaker. Well, recognized her. God, it looked like she’d seen better days.

“You were the one Underwood attacked,” he breathed, feeling the blood drain from his face even as he smiled. _The one person who could have put our entire operation in jeopardy,_ Pierce had scowled. “You survived.”

“Mmm. So it seems. Angie, this is Steve’s friend. Bucky Barnes. From Brooklyn.”

 _They knew Steve._ “A pleasure,” the patient’s visitor chimed, extending one beautifully-manicured hand. He shook it, bemused.

“Glad you’re alright,” he told her, swallowing. A name rung in his ears—“Peggy.”

“Thank you, Bucky.” She cleared her throat, half a cough rumbling through the tubes along her neck. “Now, how have you been?”

He tried to smile. Tried to lie. She certainly hadn’t commanded anything of him. Fibbing was totally an option.

But something in her steady, unreasonably smooth voice seemed to cut through the gloom and fog of his universe, seemed to render even the worst of it meaningless. This woman had nearly died because of him. Because of his actions, his mistakes. He owed her.

And so he told her everything. Everything he could. Everything the Curse would allow.

Hours passed—eleven, noon, one, two p.m. He stood, he paced, he had to sit on the couch next to Angie during some parts when his knees gave out. Felt his voice run ragged. Found a curious ebb of strength push inside him as he looked into Peggy’s firm gaze.

Angie, for her part, made a swell performance of not looking horrified nor sickened at some of the worst elements of the narrative. "Well, don't do it, then! I order you to not kill him! Wouldn’t that...?"

But Barnes shook his head, his eyes spilling over yet again. "He's got some kind of extra power over me that others don't," he sobbed. "Like this whole mess was custom-tailored for him." The probability was a nonzero one, he reminded himself.  _Fucking..._

“Then d’you think you’ll go through with it?” Angie asked, her voice shaking. “Do you have it in you?”

“I think the question is, does he have it in him not to,” Peggy answered for him. “To think I’d been so afraid of snipers, and poisoned drinks.” She gave a pained smile. “I daresay I’m much happier that it falls on the shoulders of his best friend—whether to kill him, or to refrain.”

“But what if I _can’t refrain,_ ” Barnes sobbed. _Please, you’ve got to call the police—get them to hold me down, keep me away from him—_ But before he could voice his wishes, the Curse punished him for contemplating interfering with Pierce's instructions. _Ow ow ow._ "Police," he finally wheezed through his tears. Angie quickly handed him a tissue from the night stand.

Peggy actually snorted. “And leave Steve to defend himself against Dottie? I think not. He’s stronger because of the Vita-Rays, yes, but he’s not invincible. And I’ve conducted my own investigation regarding people like the two of you, graduates from that Red Room. Guards and bullets will only slow her down.”

 _The two of you._ “You already knew about the institute?"  _Is that how Underwood recognized her...?_

“Not enough to suffice,” she admitted. “And still altogether too much. But I believe she holds something else in common with yourself, Bucky. That thing inside of you, forcing obedience. Who knows how long she’s been battling it?”

 _Dottie follows her orders._ Dottie had been a red-stamp, had been Cursed. It made a sick kind of sense, really, Barnes mused as he stood. All of them, pawns on HYDRA’s chessboard. Gun triggers, awaiting the squeeze of a finger.

“No, I’ll not alert the police to your presence here. My only regret is not getting to be there tonight, to keep an eye on Steve... so, go, Bucky. Get dressed up. Be with your friend. If only you know how much he’s missed you.” A single tear ran down her cheek, but she was smiling. “That would be the best, I think. One last lovely evening with your favorite person in the whole world. No matter what may come afterward.”

He nodded, feeling his own eyes spill over. Yes, it sounded lovely. Sounded perfect.

Peggy looked carefully at him through her lowered eyelids. "You'll do what's right when the time comes, Bucky, if you love Steve as you so claim. And I'm of the impression that you do."

 _I do._ “I’ll do it,” he replied, licking his swollen lip. “Thank you, Peggy. You too, Angie. And I’m so, so sorry about—about all of this.” He sniffed. “Hope you recover soon.”

“I intend to, Bucky. Good luck tonight.”

“Give ‘em hell, kid,” Angie called his way as he left. As orders went, that was maybe his new favorite.

* * *

He stepped numbly into the burning spray. Went through the motions of cleaning and shaving himself, feeling nothing. Feeling empty. Any less weight in his bones and he’d float away, out of his own head, into the gray void.

But when he stepped out of the shower, a black silhouette awaited him.

“Rumlow,” he moaned, hurling his arms around his handler. Felt Rumlow’s tanned ones return the motion, in strength, crushing him. "But—how are you here? I thought Pierce was out looking for you—"

"Oh, he is," Rumlow laughed, yanking up his left sleeve to reveal a bandaged bicep. "Nat got to me first. There's a tag team following a false trail to Boston as we speak, apparently, and Pierce isn't stupid enough to leave any security feeds monitoring this apartment. God forbid somebody hold onto footage of his chats with you here—"

“But you’ve gotta take Nat to that guy she mentioned—get him to break her Curse. You’ve got to—”

“Oh, I will. I will. Not to worry, Barnes.” Rumlow kissed his temple. “Once I see you off. Didn’t want you to have to get ready for your big night all alone.”

Barnes lost it, sobbing as he crumpled into Rumlow’s chest. God, this was too good. Too wonderful. Too much. Rumlow lifted his flesh hand and kissed his knuckles before inhaling sharply.

“Ugh, how’d you fuck up your hand? I leave for five minutes and of course you figure out how to get hurt at a charity gala—”

“Jumped through a broken window last night,” he admitted sheepishly. “Chased after a _graduate_ til she jumped off the building.” Even the gloves had been shredded to an extent.

“No shit,” Rumlow laughed. “C’mere.”

He sat Barnes up on the bed and rubbed Neosporin onto his scratched and scabbed palm. “Gotta take care of this. You hear me? You need both hands to work. Tonight, more than ever.” Afterward he looked around in the bathroom and found a travel-sized bottle of fresh fir-scented lotion. “Here we go. There, much better.”

Barnes licked his lips, relishing the sudden softness in his own skin, the plumes of brisk wind and snow and—and freedom. He folded his fingers over the tiny bottle, suddenly envisioning himself in another life, one where he and Steve could glide together through this invigorating winter air, taking the cold world by storm. Where they could be together, could live and breathe and fight and love, with no red-hot steel cords holding Barnes in place against his will.

Just as on the first night—years ago, it seemed now—Rumlow had brought with him slick paper bags filled with expensive suit pieces. He fastened them in place with the same air of ritualism, of reverence, of an acolyte vesting a priest. As though Barnes’ utterly wicked task had instead been something sacred, something hallowed.

Up slid the perfectly tailored black pants. The softest dress shirt he could ever have fathomed, in a crisp, near-translucent snowy white. The thin harness for his one knife. Black waistcoat, black jacket. The sturdy boots, the glittering earrings. The mask. Rumlow took extra care in tucking the rosary into his shirt, leaving a length of it just visible along his chest.

“I think we’ll leave your hair down tonight,” Rumlow decided. “You did good, washing it. Feel it. Yeah. It’s perfect the way it is.” He glanced around. “Where’s that cloth of yours?”

“Don’t have it anymore,” Barnes answered simply. “I think I’ll be okay without it.” He would have to be.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re gonna be fine.” Rumlow pressed his forehead against Barnes’. “Ready?”

 _No. Never._ “Ready.”

The car ride over was silent. Nothing from the radio, no traffic noises penetrating the bulletproof windows, no vained attempts at conversation. Bliss.

Rumlow held onto his metal hand the entire time. Barnes could still feel the pressure, could still detect the temperature. Might as well have been flesh in those swift minutes.

“See you on the other side,” Rumlow told him as they pulled up to the ballroom’s grand entrance. “Go see your friend.”

“I will.” He squeezed Rumlow’s hand one last time and exited into the night.

* * *

“You know you’re out of your mind, right?” Sam asked after sidling up to him. “Going through with this?”

“And who’s out of his mind to come hang out at the potential crime scene?” Steve replied, clapping his roommate on the back.

“I’m not making any pancakes for a year, I hope you know. You are so getting kitchen duty for roping me into this shit.”

“Well I’m not gonna stop you from getting out while you’re ahead.” Steve sighed, again wishing Bucky were here, joining Sam in roasting him like always, only to inevitably encourage him in that last critical second.

Surely he’d come again tonight. He had to, or Steve would lose it. The past two nights had been unbelievable, but he needed more time to be with his friend. Far more. He needed all of it in the world.

Sam shook his head, giving Steve’s waist a quick squeeze. “You’d have to throw me out, Captain.”

They headed down.

Yes, Director Fury had tightened security. Yes, every incoming guest would be checked for weapons, and the red carpet had been moved indoors, into the front foyer. Yes, Fury had put through a request for a much larger and better-equipped detail for the final night. Yes, the ratio of guards to guests had jumped to something around one in every fifty. Steve groaned upon noticing more than one guest taking a selfie in front of the ballroom’s one shattered window, sectioned off with a police barricade and patched over with crime scene tape.

“I see him,” Steve heard Fury abruptly call from his ear wire. “Intercepting now.”

“Already?” he asked, putting one hand to his ear. “What, did someone actually attempt to bring a gun through the security check, or—?”

“No, nothing like that, Rogers. Not yet, anyways. But we found your friend.”

Steve inhaled sharply and exchanged nods with Sam. They approached the entrance, smiling and waving and greeting as they made their way to the security booth.

“Stay away from the entrance, Rogers,” Fury himself said as he planted one hand on— _yes—_

“Hey there,” the heartbreakingly beautiful masked man called his way.

Steve took a deep breath. Nodded. “Let’s go.”

Off the four of them walked, past the unbelievably crowded dance floor ( _It’s like they wanna witness what’s gonna go down now more than ever,_ Sam had laughed to him earlier), up the stairs, onto one of the more secluded balconies. Into a private room.

“Can I ask what’s happening?” The guest glanced between his three escorts, clearly perplexed.

“We captured some impressive footage of you chasing that attacker last night,” Fury began, planting his hands on his hips. “After she stabbed the woman you’d been speaking with. And I have a couple of questions for you.”

“Please ask away.”

Fury nodded, a glint appearing in his eye. “Were you good friends with those two who’d fought her? The redheaded woman with the martial arts training? The _archer?_ ”

“Yes. She’s in the hospital now, but she survived. He’s staying with her until she stabilizes.”

“Good to hear she made it out of that,” Sam cut in, nodding. “’Cause that was some impressive Muay Thai.”

“She’s a black belt. I think. Or whatever’s a really high rank in that. I’m not an expert.”

“Not an expert,” Fury repeated, over-enunciating every syllable. “But you were just fine with jumping through a window six feet off the ground, executing a three-point landing, and nearly catching up to her before she jumped off the damn building.”

“I do parkour.” It took every fiber of Steve’s willpower not to crack up at that deadpanned response. “But mostly I was pissed at her for attacking my friend, and that other lady, and shooting those guards. And for going after him.” He jerked his head toward Steve. “Maybe I thought I could catch her, take her down. Bring her back. So everyone else would be safe.” He glanced Steve's way from the corner of his eye.

 _So I’d be safe._ How he wanted to kiss that jerk, right then and there, to just pull off that mask and just dive in…

"A vigilante, huh. Yeah, you looked pretty pissed in that security feed," Sam laughed through his nose. "You punched that brick wall hard enough to chip it."

"For real? Didn't even notice... explains why my knuckles've been hurting all day."

Fury nodded, exchanging glances with Wilson. “Uh huh. Alright.” He gave a subtle jerk of the head toward Steve. “My next question: how much would you like to be paid to stick close to this guy for the evening? Close enough to keep an eye on him. Maybe giving a helping hand, in case more attackers like that show up?”

“Pay?” The guest blinked, taken aback. “No. No way.”

“But of course. I understand if it’s too much to—”

“For this guy? I’ll do it for free.” And Steve felt a hand on his left shoulder. His new friend’s, wonderfully warm even through a thick layer of crisp black velvet.

Fury lifted his hands into the air, treading some kind of tightrope between disbelief and resigned bliss. “Good enough for me. Don’t let anyone else get a bead on him, uh…”

“Sebastian,” Steve answered for him. “If what he told me two nights ago is true.”

“Well, we appreciate any help we can get,” Fury finished, striding toward the door. “Now, if anybody needs me, just put on a wire and start breathing heavily.”

“We are so getting him drunk after this,” Sam laughed once Fury had closed the door. “You two gonna head back out? Or keep hiding for a while?”

Steve looked his new security detail over. _God_ did that jerk look amazing tonight.

“Dance with me,” he ordered. And sure enough, Sebastian's eyes crinkled upward in what had to be a smile.

"Lead the way, Cap."

* * *

Barnes swayed, turned, writhed. So many bodies. So much motion, so much noise, so much pressure and heat against his skin—but, for the first time, he wanted this. Enjoyed this.

Because this was Steve, at long fucking last. His baby was on him, grinding his hips down onto his, nuzzling the crook of his shoulder and neck, dragging short nails through his scalp, cupping the other hand under his ass. It was too good, too perfect. Barnes gave into his senses, almost all of them—the delicious feel of his friend’s hands, the scent of Steve’s cologne mingling with his own, the whispered sentiments Steve had begun to breathe into his neck, the telltale flick of a hot, hot tongue—

But his sight he had dedicated to Fury’s one command. No snipers so far. No lasers. No red beads, none anywhere on Steve. How he wanted to laugh.

9 p.m. came and went. They spent nearly an hour on the dance floor, melted into each other in that vivid darkness. Every so often another guest would take notice of the event’s famed host finally getting some, would cheer them on as the music continued to pound them.

Eventually Steve whispered something into his neck and gently pulled him toward the bar.

“You want a drink?” he asked, laughing in spite of himself.

“Drink. Yes. Let’s go—” Steve’s right hand found his left one. The metal one. “What,” Steve uttered blankly.

It had ever only been a matter of time, Barnes reasoned. “Drink first. Explanation second.”

And Steve played it cool, or at least made a valiant attempt at feigning it. “Deal.”

Barnes ordered Diesel for the both of them.

“Thanks for indulging me,” Steve murmured to him a few minutes later as they ascended the stairs and walked out onto the secluded balcony overlooking the ballroom. “I’m being overly selfish tonight, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“A selfish guy running a charity ball,” Barnes laughed. “Nah. I’m happy to indulge you anytime, Cap.”

And Steve flushed like something out of Barnes’ most agonizing fantasies. _There he is._ “Noted.”

The door to the private room stood a few yards away. Steve waved to the two guards posted in front of it. One waved back.

“That’s Maria Hill,” Steve confided. “She works at the CIA with Peggy.”

Barnes' heart throbbed at the mention of Peggy's name. _My savior._ “Is there anyone here you don’t know?” he tried to laugh out.

Steve shrugged, taking a sip. “Not after tonight. When Pepper told me the _King of Norway_ had shown up on the afterparty attendance list, I thought she was joking.” He took another. “Pepper doesn’t usually joke about unbelievable shit.” Took a third. “This stuff’s good.”

“It’s eighty percent alcohol,” Barnes murmured, unable to mask the tremors of laughter in his lungs.

“So I’m gonna be tipsy for an hour. Or I would be, if I drank yours plus mine, and that’s a maybe. That Army experiment turned me into one expensive drunk.” Steve grinned. “You hit the stuff hard?”

“Haven’t for a while,” Barnes admitted. His desperate stunt two days before absolutely did _not_ count. If only it had worked, he lamented. “And even then it took a lot. Luckily we were in New Orleans.” God bless unadulterated absinthe. One sip and his lips had gone numb. And four ounces later, well.

“New—wait, who’s we?” Steve asked him. “Tell me.”

He could tell. “Nat, and Clint, and Lucky the Pizza Dog, and me. We were roommates.”

“Yeah? The same two people who fought that assassin last night? They lived with you?”

Barnes nodded. “I think they like you.”

“I gathered.” Steve downed the rest of his glass and then made a face. “I owe them. Big time. I’d like to meet with them, soon, if you’d be okay with that. I need to thank them.”

“I’d like that, too,” he laughed. “Clint likes coffee. Nat prefers vodka.”

“It’s killing me that she and Peg got hurt,” Steve murmured, hunching over the balcony railing. “Can’t stop thinking about what would’ve happened to me if Peggy hadn’t yelled her name— _Dottie,_ that was it. Doesn’t sound like an assassin’s name.”

Barnes shrugged. “Assassins can be named anything, remember.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, _Sebastian Winter._ ”

“You’d better.” He leered into the drink in his hands. “But don’t fret about Nat. She’s tougher than she looks, and way harder to kill. And she wanted to intervene. So just focus on tonight, on relaxing. Make it worthwhile for all your guests.”

“Don’t know how I can do that.”

“I do,” he laughed, handing over the second glass. “Go to town.”

Steve grinned, shaking his head, and accepted the offer. “But you have to come with me. You’re my official date this evening.”

“Yes, sir.” Barnes linked arms with him and headed downstairs, back into the fray. Greeted, waved, squinted his eyes to make it clear he could smile under that mask. Tucked his head against Steve’s shoulder for photos. Danced again. He scarcely needed the arm's sensors to tell that his heart rate and body temperature had risen dramatically—and they weren’t alone. But the ballroom and both concert halls were absolutely packed with people, dancing and chatting and milling about, egged on by the thrill of an assassination attempt, he supposed. Not a single guest looked in the direction of his crotch, even in the off chance they would have an unobstructed view.

Steve introduced him to the man called Stark, who at four martinis in could still hold his own in a thermonuclear astrophysics discussion with a pair of elderly engineers in wire-rimmed glasses. The strawberry-blonde woman on his arm tapped away at a smartphone, laughing distractedly as one of the senior-level guards made a quip in her ear. “We both know we’ve seen worse, Rhodey,” she snapped back at him through a tired smile. “Just don’t get him started on the _Ultron_ project…”

“Okay, I can’t remember the last time I’ve had that much fun,” Steve eventually laughed as they headed back upstairs. “And it took a fifth of Everclear to get me this tipsy last year. Sam told me I cost too much to party with him.”

“Sam? The man with you and the security chief earlier?”

“Yeah. My roommate. Uh, landlord. Friend. Coworker. He helped me get all this started, you know. Introduced me to the people who did fundraising for the VA here, and he’s coordinated personnel for all the charity events since then. He’s a good guy. I wanted him to meet you so bad. He’d love you.”

Barnes brushed that last comment off. “I went online, you know,” he replied. “Looked at all the work you’ve done. It’s really amazing, the number of people you’ve been able to help.” _I wish I could’ve been there,_ he wanted to say. _Wish I could have made it that much easier on you. Wish I could’ve done something to help. Anything._ “I’ve just been screwing around, hiding in New Orleans. No big cause to fight for. Nothing at all like this.”

Steve shook his head. “It’s not a contest. Sometimes just keeping yourself alive is the most important thing you can do.” He blinked. “Who were you hiding from?”

 _Shit._ Barnes had slipped. “Don’t really wanna talk about them.” There, the burning ceased.

Steve huffed, his faced contorting in concern and maybe something else. “Then… tell me about New Orleans. Always wanted to go there.”

And Barnes lost track of time, delving into the years he’d spent in its warm, humid hold, of the wonderful people with tongues like chainsaws and livers of titanium, of his rickety old apartment that by all means should not have survived the hurricane, of learning the etymology of zombies and of accidentally meeting real vampires, of trying every kind of food and drink known to man, of listening to a thousand genres of music for free whenever he snuck into hundred-year-old venues and festivals, and of getting caught off-guard by the stunning dappled sunlight filtering through the mesh of oak tree branches overhead.

As he spoke, he watched Steve soften, watched his eyes begin to glisten, as though he were instead telling some sad story about a long-dead mutual friend. “It sounds amazing,” he murmured at one point, running his tongue across his lower lip. “You’ve gotta bring me with you when you go again.”

Barnes felt his breath hitch in his throat. “Dunno when I’ll ever be able to go back,” he admitted. “And even if I did, I’m not sure it’d still be the same.” Nothing would matter after tonight. Nothing would hold any beauty, any meaning, any worth, not with Steve gone.

_God…_

“But you miss it.” Steve leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“Yeah. I miss lots of things. Places. People.” It _hurt._

“Did you miss me,” Steve breathed, intertwining his warm fingers with Barnes’ flesh hand. “At all?”

Christ, that heat felt so good. “Steve—I—I’m not who you—”

“You always got so pissed when you’d found out I’d done something stupid,” Steve murmured, a bright flush creeping steadily up his neck. “You always knew, somehow. But sometimes you were far away. So you’d come running, you’d sprint up and scream at me. You’d pull me off the ground. Carry me home. I knew you’d missed me then. God, I loved it.” He shivered.

“You sure it’s me you’re thinking of?” Barnes tried to laugh. Instead the words came out sounding close to melancholic. Closer to apologetic. _He knows._

“’Course it’s you I’m thinking of, jerk.” Steve looked at him with shining, dripping eyes. “You don’t have to lie to me, Bucky. I know it’s you.”

His throat ran dry. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

“Come on,” Steve pleaded. “I knew who you were the instant I saw you again, Buck. It didn’t matter how much you’d changed, or what's happened, or who you need to hide from. I could never forget you. All I wanna do is help you, get you away from whoever's...anyone who's...” The corners of his mouth twitched with unspoken terrors.

God, he looked sick. Hurt. Bucky took a deep, shuddering breath, squeezing Steve's fingers between his own.

And then Nat’s command from however many years ago burned brightly in his mind. _Tell him,_ she had ordered, cruelly, irrevocably.

Barnes lifted his beloved friend's fingers to his muzzled lips, holding him tight. “Steve, I—”

“GET DOWN!”

The assassin appeared out of nowhere, swinging down from the ceiling and landing neatly on the balcony’s wide railing, pistol up.

Barnes was ready. Was pissed. Was done. He blocked all eight of her rapidly-fired shots with his metal arm, feinted punches to her head and hip, ducked to dodge her counterstrike, finally headbutting her with a roar. _Damn,_ was that skull hard. But he had been instructed to give hell, and so hell he would give.

Her style was eerily similar to Nat’s, not quite the hunched stance of Rumlow’s or his own. She seemed to come at him from all sides at once, a whirlwind of joints and blades, of strikes and slashes. A few times she even pushed him down long enough to approach Steve, each time pulling an altogether different knife from her thigh holster—green-edged, slick with some kind of liquid. Something meant just for her target.

No. No no _no—_

Steve hissed, ducking and rolling for all he was worth, a super soldier fighting a demon, one designed specifically to take him down. Barnes silenced and stilled himself, became shadow, became the dead of winter. Struck, knocking Dottie clear into a wall. She wiped blood from her mouth, dodged a row of bullets from the guards, and somersaulted onto the balcony railing, both knives poised.

“You’re taking too long,” she hissed at him, nearly making contact with jolting knees and elbows and a knife, from out of nowhere. “Keep your cover up and _do it—_ ”

 _Ow._ “Go fight someone your own size,” he growled, roundhouse-kicking her off the railing. She landed neatly on the balcony floor, flourishing her knife, planning her strike. He had less than one second to—

“Get him inside!” the guard bellowed at him. The nice guard, the one Steve knew. The one with a stream of blood bubbling out from her thigh.

Barnes needed not be told twice. He threw one arm around Steve’s waist and yanked him through the door, sliding the lock shut the instant he’d closed it behind him. Pushed Steve away from the wall, ducked just in time to dodge an enormous blade plunging straight through the three-plus inches of wood, a trickle of green fluid flowing down from the incision.

_Way too close._

More screaming. Gunfire. Barked commands. The wire in Steve’s ear buzzed and spluttered, so Barnes pulled it out.

“He’s safe,” he yelled into the mic. “We’re inside.”

Not that a locked door would foil a Red Room graduate. But in the off chance a small army of guards proved insufficient, Barnes would be ready for her.

“They’re in!” Fury shouted to someone else on the other end of the line. “Sebastian, is the window covered?”

“Yeah! Yeah, it is. We’re staying down, just in case.”

“Good. Keep him bunkered down.”

That he could do. “Falling under radio silence now. There could be more where she came from.”

“Acknowledged.”

Barnes muted his end of the mic, tossing it onto the coffee table as Steve collapsed back onto the elegantly carved sofa. Bunker, his ass. The window was enormous, and not even bulletproof.

“C’mere," Steve murmured to him, shrugging out of his jacket. “Let me see if you’re okay.”

Barnes smiled and approached. Steve looked too good, his suit askew, his shirt undone, missing its top three buttons. Ripped out during the fight, Barnes guessed. He could just make out the text of the tattoo just below Steve’s clavicle. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine.” Steve blinked. “Sad. Scared. Did she hurt you?” His eyes flicked to the gashes in his left suit sleeve, revealing shreds of his white shirt and, beneath that, the glint of metal.

“Nothing that broke skin,” he replied. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright,” Steve moaned, covering his face with one hand. “This is a disaster, and she’s still out there. What if she’d…?” He looked up to catch Barnes’ gaze. “I could’ve lost you. Again.”

“Don’t lose heart,” Barnes replied, sinking into the couch next to his friend, leaning in as Steve wrapped one arm around him and pulled him closer. “I’m here. Not lost. She's not gonna get to you. I swear it.”

* * *

"Get out of here!" Hill rasped as Sam tied off her leg. "I'm fine—don't worry about me—"

"If I don't staunch the bleeding now, then we lose you. Not an option." Sam squeezed her hand. The hollow thunder of gunfire continued to split through the air, perforated with screaming from the few attendees in the building and the assassin's occasional return fire.  _She's out for blood._ For Steve's. 

 _Dottie_ , Peggy had called her, just before Sam had ushered Steve to safety the night before.  _Wonder how much Peg knows._ In the off chance they survived all this, Sam made a mental note to check in with her at the first opportunity.

"How bad's it look?" Sam asked Rhodes, who had ducked behind their makeshift bunker—an overturned buffet table, good only for camouflaging them from the assassin's line of sight.

Rhodes popped out of cover for a half-second. "She's mauling them, Sam." He checked his pistol's clip, then patted himself down. "Damn it, out of ammo." 

 _Fuck._ Sam fished his own pistol from his holster and checked the clip—one bullet left.  _Better make it count._ "Got a plan?"

"Got an idea," Rhodes replied with a joyless grin. "I could try to sneak up on her while she's focused on that door. Get her into a grapple, so somebody down here can get a clean shot. One second's all we need." He took a deep breath and made to move. "Cover me, Sam."

 _Cover me._  

Sam felt the floor drop out from beneath him then. The ballroom dissolved into nothing. Nothing but air, the curve of the earth, and the ringing of explosions on all sides. That, and his target: a heavily-guarded makeshift comms tower, five hundred meters to his eleven and rapidly approaching.

 _"Cover me!"_ Sam hollered into his radio.  _"We only got one shot at this!"_

His fellow FALCONs shifted their formation, taking out rockets in midair, deftly leading the heat-sinking missiles into one another, expertly dodging shells and fighter jet fire alike. Sam tried not to think too hard about how the hell these people had come into possession of a damn jet. His faith in his own government had steadily eroded with each passing day of his service; little revelations such as this one did nothing to help.

Sam tried not to think just then of how his plan to complete four tours, just like his dad, may not have been such a brilliant one after all.

 _"Target in range_ ," his wingman called mid-swoop.  _"Take it, Sam!"_

 _"Roger._ "Sam fired the single payload, then dropped the empty weapon to the smoking earth below.

With even one more shell loaded in the thing, he'd have been too encumbered to properly maneuver. But hell knew Sam's machine guns wouldn't have been enough to take the tower out. Not even all of theirs combined, the six airmen. Three sets of partners versus the world, and all the horrors it had to offer.

_"INCOMING—"_

The subsequent explosion was wrong, Sam thought, far too loud and far too close. It was all wrong. The shockwaves were coming from the wrong direction, from the worst possible place.

As though in slow motion, Sam flipped about to watch the worst the world had to offer unfold before him, a stage drama for a one-man audience. He was just that, nothing more than a spectator, and all his screaming would not change the monstrous scene taking place before his eyes. All his training, all the time spent in team-building exercises, all his stress-testing—all for what, exactly?

Blood, thick and hot, cloyed Sam's nose and spattered his goggles. _"RILEY—!"_

"—Wilson? ...Sam?"

Sam took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah, I—wait. Rhodey. No."

Rhodes looked back down at him, and for a hot instant all Sam could see was the sun. He squinted, pursing his lips, his words sticking to his burning throat like barbs.

All things considered, it really was insane to think that this is where the two of them had landed. That he, a former PJ of little higher note, had ended up in this very same nightmare of a scenario as the legendary Colonel James Rhodes, every living airman's hero. Sam wondered just how many of the man's lauded one hundred and thirty-eight combat drops he would have preferred to where he was crouched just now, tasked with facing down an expert assassin from some evil crime syndicate, on foot and the tightest of clocks. The odds were that at least one of those many missions had been more dire than this one, with a slimmer chance of success, with more intimidating opposition. Surely, at least one.

But, for all it was worth, Sam was terrified. Not for himself, no, but that this would be the ground upon which his idol, the country's finest airman, finally bled out.

_No—please—not again—_

Rhodes reached down and squeezed his shoulder. "Sam?"

"Let me," Sam pleaded, holding out his pistol grip-forward. "You're a good shot, Rhodes. I mean, so'm I, but I'm—I'm more spry." He swallowed his fears with a quick grin and thumped his chest. "Specimen."

Rhodes' jaw dropped. "Sam, _no._  We've both seen how good she is at close-combat. You have your whole life ahead of you, kid. Besides, Steve wouldn't want—"

"Steve's opinion won't fucking matter if she kills him while we're arguing." Sam forced his smile to widen. "I just have a bit more faith in my muscles than in yours, old man. No offense."

Rhodes sighed, rubbing his eyelids. "None taken, aside from the _old man_ comment. But, Sam—be careful. Please."

"Line up your shot." Sam hopped out of cover. "I got this." 

After crossing the ballroom on tiptoe, he carefully crept up a rear stairwell, staying out of Dottie's peripheral vision whenever possible. _How the hell could one person do all this?_ Something was very wrong here, Sam thought. _This should've taken a team of people to accomplish._  

There had to be more assassins where Dottie had come from.

Now on the third-level balcony, Sam looked over the crowds. But the only gunmen were Fury's guards, the yet-uninjured handful firing shots in Dottie's direction from the ballroom's scant cover.  _Who the hell is that good?_

For whatever reason, that security footage of Sebastian Winter punching a dent into a brick wall flickered through Sam's head then. 

 _No. No way_. Not if the guy was who Steve thought he was. Besides, they'd had eyes on him the whole night, and he had fought her himself. No way he'd have made it out of that room and away from Steve without anyone seeing.

No, Dottie was working solo, backed up only by her own skills. All evidence pointed to that alone.

Sam looked down over the balcony below, where the assassin had begun pulling minute pieces of machinery from somewhere in her dress. In between dodging bullets, she stuck each piece to the door with gel and started wiring them together.  _She's gonna blow it down—!_

Now or never. The instant a well-placed shot from one of Fury's men drew Dottie's attention away from his path, he jumped.

 _Got you_ _—_ and then Sam held on for dear life as Dottie dexterously rolled atop him, kneed him in the gut, and bodily flipped him over the balcony railing. It took every ounce of Sam's strength just to grasp her right forearm. He glanced down, past his dangling feet, to the marble-tiled floor far below.

"Get _off,_ " Dottie hissed, violently wriggling her arm to shake him loose. "You can't stop us. It's too late for him. Give up." She slid further over the rail, writhing and barely dodging shots as Sam sustained his grip.

 _Last time I ever make fun of Steve for being heavier than he looks_ , Sam laughed to himself before inhaling sharply.

_'...Us?'_

But he snapped back to attention as his hand began to slip from around Dottie's wrist.  _Damn it_ _—c'mon—_

Still, even with her inhuman strength, Dottie was now bent firmly over the balcony railing, trapped in place, as Sam continued to hang onto her arm. Just one more second, that was all they needed.  _Take it, Rhodes._

 _Take it. Don't worry about me. I can fall._ At this height? No sweat.  _This is noth—_

A gunshot rang out, and Sam hit the floor.

An instant later, so did Dottie, whose skull cracked sharply against the cold tiles barely a yard to Sam's left. Blood trailed from the bullet wound in her shoulder, a thin line coursing over that similarly-hued star tattooed on her deltoid.  _Mission accomplished,_ Sam thought as he watched her eyes cloud and flicker shut. 

"Sam!" Rhodes' face filled his vision. Behind his head, the ballroom's many chandeliers began warping and spinning like kaleidoscopes. "Sam, are you—?"

"I'm good," he chuckled under his breath, wincing as Rhodes slipped one arm behind his back to prop him up. "Gonna hurt like hell tomorrow morning—but, on the bright side, Steve owes me a big breakfast."

Rhodes laughed through his nose, patting Sam's chest. "You did good, Sam. Take a breather. That's it."

Sure, Sam thought, he had failed in matching his dad's number of years in service. But, all things considered, he had still been able to do some good in the world regardless. Rhodes had said so, and wasn't that just as good anyways? Even better, really. 

Never again, Sam had indeed sworn. Never again.

 _Hope Steve's okay,_ he thought as Rhodes' pained grin faded to black.

* * *

_“Assailant down,_ ” the radio suddenly piped. Fury's voice. If only someone had been able to make that statement yesterday, Barnes thought miserably. If only. _“Rhodes, Wilson, that was some fine work. Sebastian, keep Rogers in that room til the event’s over. We're moving the VIPs into a peripheral ballroom. Commencing lock-in now.”_

That order was clear. Amazing. Astounding, really. They haven’t ended the event. _It’s still going on._

And now Barnes had time. Time he could spend with his friend. Time to catch up.

“No one else is going to hurt you,” he told Steve, who just looked back at him with those wistful blue eyes. “No one else is here. Just me.” God, he wanted to weep. “I’m here.”

“Yeah, you are,” Steve replied, reaching up to cup Barnes’ cheek with one hand, his thumb tracing the soft edge of the black mask. “Took your sweet time, jerk.”

“Punk.” And he felt a slight nudging behind his head—Steve’s hand. Loosening the strap of his mask. Pulling it away. But before he had time to react, Steve had rocked up to kiss him.

And suddenly he was fourteen again, sick of listening to his mom’s unending crying, sick of his own. Had slipped out, had thrown rocks at Steve’s window. Steve had climbed down the side of his rickety old house, risking serious injury. Had jumped from six feet up, landing perfectly in Bucky’s arms. The impact had jolted Bucky, knocking him onto his side, but he’d protected Steve’s head as they rolled onto the ground. Had sighed in relief. Had kissed his stupid skinny daredevil of a friend. Had found it difficult to stop. Had spent so long in the dead grass, that night, exploring Steve’s mouth, nuzzling his friend’s cheek. And Steve had kept his skinny little arms around his waist the whole time, squeezing him tight, his bony fingers lacing together to lock Bucky against him.

He was sixteen. A junior, finally old enough to attend prom. Had been pumped for it, had spent the past month anonymously submitting song requests to student council. Had learned that underclassmen were not allowed to be brought as dates. So, fuck prom. He’d gone to Steve’s house, not having told him yet about his plan to ditch, had said hey to Steve’s aunt, had trudged up that rickety staircase, had smiled upon hearing Steve calling his name. Had opened Steve’s door without knocking. Had liked what he’d seen. Steve had played it cool, yanking the sheets up to cover himself, tossing the tissues aside, asking Bucky how come he’d skipped prom like he was asking him to check a baseball score on TV. Bucky had shaken his head, unable to hold back his triumphant smile, nor his delight, nor one other thing. Asked Steve if he was up for it. Had ecstatically bit his lip at the response. Pulled off his shirt, tugged down his jeans. Covered his friend’s little body with his own.

Eighteen. Done with midterm exams, as of three hours ago. His mom had stopped crying, her grieving having finally run its course. She was out on a date night with Alex, she’d told him. It hadn’t really registered at the time. But sure enough, Steve had rapped at the door a scant few minutes after she had left. Had brought a sketchbook with him, and colored pencils. Expensive ones. So Bucky lit up the fireplace and they had their own date, staving off the frigid, snowy air outside with only firelight and each other's skin and breath. By the time Bucky’s mom had returned, they’d retired to his room, two extremely warm bodies now successfully documented for posterity, one perhaps drawn slightly more accurately than the other.

How those kids had changed, Bucky thought then, opening his mouth wider, letting Steve push him back onto the couch. And, after all this time, how they really had not.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” Steve murmured into the thin skin of his throat. “You don’t even—if you had any idea— _any—_ “ And down he bit. _Hard._ Perfect. “I missed you. Every second, like—”

“You’re fucking inspirational, you know that?” Bucky found it in himself to reply, grinding his hips up against Steve’s as Steve carded long fingers through his hair. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. Putting all this together, risking everything—I can’t tell you how proud I am of you.” When exactly he’d begun to cry, he could not quite say. “I missed you, Steve. More than you could know.” More than he’d allowed himself to admit. More than he could bear to acknowledge, lest his heart shatter. The way it did now.

“Shh.” Out came a once-white cloth, worn so thin as to look translucent. “It’s alright.” Steve wiped all too gently at his cheeks, up to the corners of his eyes, pressed his mouth into Bucky’s throat again, inhaled deeply.

“But you’re back,” Bucky numbly continued. “For so long, I thought I was never gonna see you again. Kept trying to push you away...God, I was so stupid—”  _The worst—_

“Look at me.”

Bucky looked at him, the stinging in his eyes surely matching Steve's own.

“Tell me what you want.”

 _I want you to finish me, right here, right now. So I can't do the same to you. I want you to breathe, to live, for the rest of your life. For the rest of mine. I want out of this. I want away from you, only so I can come back, so I can love you the way you deserve—_ And the punishment-pain erupted, searing him alive from within. He bit his lip, feeling bile form in his throat.

"I want you," he could only sob.

Steve pulled him into a sitting position, tugged off his jacket, unfastened his vest. Chuckled in approval at the knife harness. “I still have mine, somewhere.” Went to work on his shirt buttons.

Bucky brushed his hands once down Steve's thin shirt, just over his pecs, just to find out how they’d feel under the thin fabric. Then he ripped it off with a triumphant growl.

"That's what I thought," Steve chuckled. Then he inhaled sharply once he’d pulled off both of Bucky’s gloves. “Bucky, what…? You said earlier that you'd exp—”

“Long story,” he answered weakly, feeling his throat close up. Steve continued to unbutton his shirt, his eyes still glued to that metal hand in wonder. “My old arm got ripped off in a fight. They gave me this prosthetic. I kinda like it, but I—I understand if you don’t want to—if it’s putting you off—”

But by then Steve had pulled the entirety of the shirt down off his shoulders. Without warning, the slick press of a tongue lathed against that sensitive seam of metal and flesh.

It took everything in Bucky’s power not to scream, not to sob loudly enough for the guards to notice. He could merely writhe, mewling, biting back his own pleasure. This was—was the most—was just—

“Anything but,” Steve laughed into his shoulder, trailing kisses along his collarbone and licking a long stripe up his neck. “And it looks amazing.” He paused, his mouth hovering just behind Bucky’s garnet-studded earlobe. “It doesn’t—doesn’t hurt, does it? I’m not hurting you—?”

“Not at all.” Bucky smiled into Steve’s throat. “Keep going.”

“Mmm…hey, isn’t this mine?” Steve murmured as he ran his tongue along Bucky’s chest, over the length of rosary beads. “You really held onto it the whole time you were gone?”

“Somehow, yeah." He remembered, then. Waking up on the floor of Steve’s room, of spotting it glinting at him from under the bed. Of wondering how long it would take Steve to notice it had gone missing. Of when would be the best time and place to reveal it. He’d never planned on waiting this long, to say the least. "Wanted to take a piece of you with me.”

“I can’t believe you,” Steve laughed, returning his mouth to the seam at Bucky’s left shoulder, working at it until Bucky began to spasm.

The next thing he knew, his slacks had fallen to the floor. Steve sighed in appreciation at what he’d found underneath—the lack of underwear or Bucky's magnificent ass or both—and dipped in to explore him there with his tongue. Bucky wept openly, laughed in bursts as Steve discovered his more sensitive spots, dug his fingers into Steve’s hair as Steve took him in his mouth.

Two slow-burning, white-hot spasms later, Bucky finally tipped Steve’s head up to where they could make eye contact. “My turn.” And Steve let him flip the two of them over on the couch, let him position his massive limbs any way he deemed fit.

It turned out that Steve liked to talk as Bucky worked. “Never stopped wondering—never. Where’d—where you’d gone, why you didn’t say anything, didn’t say goodbye—wondered what I’d done wrong, where I’d messed up, and—Buck, I don’t care anymore, I’ve got the rest of my life to find out. All I care about is that you came back. You found me. You still want me, after—after everything…” On and on he whimpered, in the same voice Bucky had worked so hard to bleach from his memories, to hide from those who had been eager to take everything of his away.

But they had not gotten Steve. Not yet. He continued to moan, his words matching the motions of his hands on Bucky’s scalp, slow and deep. And he gave a dry sob as Bucky finished him off, his massive chest heaving and flushed.

“Of course I still want you,” Bucky whispered into the burning flesh of Steve’s inner thigh. “I never stopped. Not once. No matter what else happened.” He kissed, once, twice, before licking a broad stripe back up Steve’s length and torturing him at the tip. Steve’s spastic, whining moans at that could have woken the dead. “Tell me what to do.”

Steve inhaled sharply. “You—you mean it?”

“Now.”

“But—you need to tell me how you’ll—”

And Bucky made The Face.

“God, that's right.” Steve relaxed visibly, nodding, his jaw slackening. “Yeah. Yeah, okay—”

“Tell me, Stevie.”

Steve swallowed, his eyes shining. “Touch yourself.”

And Bucky rocked down onto his back, his head resting against the cushioned armrest. Began stroking, humming, feeling Steve’s eyes burning into every inch of him, felt himself swelling, flushing—

“Last time I ever leave my sketchpad behind,” Steve whispered, his mouth suddenly pressed against the soft line where Bucky’s hip met his thigh. “Last fucking time. Mark my words.”

“Last fucking time,” Bucky repeated, increasing the speed of his stroking as a familiar pair of warm hands cupped him, began to probe in slow, circular motions, easing their way in. “Steve, you gotta get in on this before I—I can’t—”

“Not yet,” Steve panted. “Gotta find something to help—don’t wanna hurt you—”

“There’s a small bottle in the pocket of my jacket,” Bucky croaked. “Use that stuff.”

“Got it.”

That next little stretch of time Bucky avowed to brand into his memory for all eternity. The heat and weight of Steve’s body pressing against his, the fresh scent of a snow-covered forest, the aching in his cock rising to a blistering heat as Steve’s hands joined his own—all seemed to blur and coalesce together in one endless expanse of sensation. Steve locked his mouth against Bucky’s, his tongue torturing the inside of his mouth, making up for lost time.

They found a rhythm, took it slow, Bucky dragging the backs of his nails against the rippling expanse of Steve’s back. There was just so much of him now. So much—

As the pressure continued to coil inside of him, threatening to end him, to tear him apart from the inside, Bucky felt his own cries growing louder and louder, bursting from his mouth and into Steve’s. Too much. Too much—oh, gods, yes, there it was— _there he was_ —oh, _how_ had he missed Steve’s voice, moaning exultantly like that—just like that.

Bucky’s own cry was half-wail, half-song. He trembled in Steve's arms, too limp to stay upright. His strength utterly ripped from his limbs, Bucky let Steve gently lay him back down onto the soft couch cushions, and still idly stroked himself per Steve’s command. In time Steve drew away, trailing kisses from the corner of his mouth, down his throat, along his heaving chest muscles, licking in slow circles around the rest of him. “At ease,” he eventually murmured.

Bucky let his arms fall to his sides, running his tongue across his lower lip. His heart rate was way up, the arm sensors told him. Temperature way up. Heh. He rested, letting his heart rate ease, sensing Steve wiping them clean and then lazily sorting through their pile of clothes, keeping one warm hand on Bucky’s as he worked. He considered the faint glow of streetlights not quite penetrating the wide window’s thin curtains.

On the other side of the door, somewhere, people were dancing, celebrating, enjoying music and food and each other, willingly in spite of the nonzero probability that they’d have to leave the building in a stretcher.

Steve had made that choice. Steve knew the risk. Steve had returned. Had waited for him.

“Hey. You still with me?” Steve kissed the soft stretch of skin below his navel.

“Yeah. Yeah, still here.” Bucky slowly inched up. Tipped Steve’s chin up so he could look at his face again, just the one he’d remembered. Same eyes, with those ungodly long lashes. Same soft lips. Same relaxed, trusting expression. “God, it really is you. Not...not a dream...you're...”

“Yep, believe it or not,” Steve chuckled. “I guess we have changed a bit, since, uh, the last time we did this.”

“A little,” Bucky sighed, running his metal hand down that massive breast, circling his fingertip around one reddened nipple. “Can't say I'm unhappy.”

Steve licked his lower lip. “While we’re at it, I gotta say your ass is fantastic. Not that that’s much of a change from—”

“Don’t I know it,” he cut in, dropping his flesh hand to the pile of clothing. “But at least I know how to dress it now. No more baggy pants.”

“Good, because covering that up should be a capital offense,” Steve laughed. “And...yep, this shirt’s destroyed.” He tossed it aside before helping Bucky back into his own, kissing his neck as he haphazardly fastened the buttons.

“Bill me,” Bucky laughed after pulling his pants back on. “I might get a tax return. For what’s clearly a charitable contribution to society. Covering _those_ up should be a capital offense.” He felt around for his jacket, his vest, his knife harness. Found it.

He stopped cold. Something else started up.

Ow.

Ow.

_Ow._

_No,_ he thought. _No, not now. I’m not ready._

He needed more time. Needed far more time. Needed months, years, decades. Eons.

Steve could not die, not today. Not by his hand. Not by anyone’s—but—

Ow.

He felt his eyes glaze over from the pain. Felt his senses seal up, the room dimming as his vision bled to red, red, red—

“You alright?” Steve asked him, tucking his ruined shirt into his slacks. “Bucky?”

_Ow. Ow. Ow._

“S-Steve.” He estimated there was now a six-percent chance his face was dry. Feeling anything through the pain was now out of the question. He could only guess, and even then not for much longer—

“Yeah? What’s up?” Steve closed in on him, brushing his thumb against Bucky’s lower lip. “Buck?”

“What. Time. Is it.” Bucky gagged from the electric jolting in his throat, dropping the harness. Keeping his grip on something else. Ow. Oww. Ow. _Ow—_

“Midnight,” Steve replied. “Buck, what—you look sick—is it the—is it your—?” He inhaled sharply, clutching Bucky's hip with one hand and cupping his jaw with the other. "Bucky...?"

_Does he know?_

Feeling his own eyes begin to rim with red, Bucky kissed Steve. Slowly, dragging his tongue across Steve’s raw lower lip. Oh, how it hurt. Oh, no. No. _No._

No—no— _no—not my baby—_ not his friend, his sweetheart—

And his hand moved.

_NO_

“Ow,” Steve yelped, before choking. Before spluttering. Spitting blood. Crumpling back into the sofa. Staring at Bucky, horrified. Hurt.

Bucky watched from the back seat of his own mind, watched his hands as they pulled on his boots, as they zipped them closed, as one slipped the knife into his jacket pocket.

_NO NO NO NO NO_

He’d done it. He’d done it. He’d killed his baby. Hell, he felt wet. All this wetness, out of nowhere. _God—_

“Bucky…” Steve’s voice was a rasp, an empty shell of what it had been one minute before, all consonants with the vowels drained out. God, he’d grown so pale, so fast. His blood pooled across the floor.

Bucky leaned down and kissed his beautiful, brave, loving friend on the forehead. On the hollow of one cheek. On his throat. On his red, red lips. Tasted his blood. Tasted his sweetheart, his love, his mission— _his—_

God, it _hurt._

“I love you, Steve,” he managed to rasp out, the pain turning his vision to white, to static. “I’m so, so sorry. You deserved better than this.” He wiped his face. So wet. Too wet. “You always have.”

And he dove through the window, registering only red, red pain, as uncountable millions of tiny glass shards twinkled around him like stars. Diamonds. Snowflakes.

He would never remember landing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Civil War prompted me to add in Sam and Rhodey's scene here! They both deserved SO MUCH BETTER omfg


	12. Chapter 12

_III. For thine is the Kingdom._

* * *

Somehow, Steve swore he could hear singing.

_I’ve come of heart, baby, but that's okay—_

_'cause Trouble Man don't get in my way—_

Yep. Singing.

…music? ...Sam's ringtone. But smoother, less tinny. The real thing, and on better speakers. Huh.

…ow. _Ow._

_Jesus._

He groaned, debating the worst that could happen should he open his eyes. He could feel something soft and heavy over him. A blanket? Heard beeping—monitors. Felt peculiar stinging sensations in his forearms. …a hospital?

Steve had dreamed that Bucky had come back. Had saved his life. Had made love to him. Had killed him. Had wept, while diving out of a window, blood dripping from his eyes. What a fucking nightmare.

He sighed, and opened his eyes. And it all came rushing back.

"Fuck—" He bolted up, only faintly noting the tensions in his joints and stinging pain everywhere else. _“Bucky—?”_

“Easy, easy, man. It’s alright.” Sam was there, looking like he hadn’t slept in years. _Jesus._

“What happened,” Steve rasped, cringing at the pain in his throat. “What—”

“You got stabbed, back at the third gala,” Sam quickly answered as doctors and nurses filed in, busied themselves with the many monitors. No doubt his EKG was through the roof.

“St—” God. The _fucking_ gala. His stupid fucking bravado endangering all of those people—“Where’s—?”

“Hill? Downstairs, across from Peggy. Just a flesh wound. They’re both getting released tomorrow. You’ve been out for three days, man.” Sam wrinkled his nose. “What happened, Rogers?”

Steve trembled, going over that awful scene once more in his mind. Nothing good. Locked door, missing friend, dried fluids on the couch, ripped clothes, broken window, blood pooling across the floor— Sam _had_ to know.

“He must've been ordered to kill me,” Steve croaked, remembering the familiar stiffness of Bucky’s limbs, the tortured face he always made when that Curse punished him for delaying, when—oh. _Oh._

It dawned on him.

“ _Where is he?_ Did they—did they find—” He could not bring himself to finish that sentence, trapped inside the vision of his beautiful baby’s twisted limbs in a bloody heap however many floors below that window—

“No sign of the guy, Rogers. He must’ve survived that jump. Not surprised, given the other footage we’d gotten of him the night before.” Sam pursed his lips, waiting a few minutes before speaking. “The gala was pretty much over by the time the guards noticed blood leaking under that door, and the afterparty got postponed til you're—”

“We’ve got to find him,” Steve wheezed. “He—he failed his task, so—he’s still in pain, and—and whoever it was that—”

“Look, your friend is long gone, Steve. Even the manhunt they launched that night has lost his trail. And the only one who knows what he looks like is yourself, but you’re not leaving here til your condition’s stabilized—”

“Sam, please,” he begged. “Please, listen. Just one more time.”

It was always tough to tell to what degree Sam bought into the things he heard. He was a people person, trained to let others have their say, trained to ease tension and to show respect to things that he maybe didn’t always agree with, knowing that airing them out was an important first step, that change would have to come later. But Steve’s tale just sounded so unbelievable, so close to the realm of fantasy—

“D’you believe me?” Steve asked once he’d finished, once the doctors and nurses had filed out, once his heart rate had slowed.

“Three days ago, I would’ve had a tough time believing, yeah,” Sam replied carefully, pulling out his phone. “But you need to read this.”

Steve squinted. “What? Why?”

A news clip, maybe? The soldier in him prepared himself for the worst-case scenario, that a body with a metal prosthetic arm had been found in a river, or that anyone else had been hurt at that ball—

“…these are dossiers.” Of people he’d never met before. Dossiers—and medical records, also of people he’d never met before. Though he had heard one of the names.

_Bucky’s dad?_

Experimentation on prisoners—coercive measures—automatically coercive—genetically transmittable—a designer mutation. Oh, _Bucky—_

“Someone found all of these,” Sam explained, “and connected all of the data together. Must’ve taken years of work. There’s a long essay at the bottom explaining the significance.” Steve checked the post’s author—NAR84. _Whoever that was._ “That, and a ton of creepy footage left on conspiracy boards over the past few decades. And then a bunch of bank records, connecting our buddy Pierce to _that_ place, up in Massachusetts.” Sam pointed out a link to what should have been a college website, judging by its .edu extension.

But the documents and surveillance footage attached told him otherwise.

“Pierce—with all of this? What they turned all those people into…? _…Jesus._ ” Steve fought the urge to retch as he scrolled through more images of kids in knife fights or strapped to chairs, through more anonymous reports of something called a Red Room, of sleeper agents and perfect soldiers. Assassins.

“Yeah. The police raided it last night. Nothing but bad news through and through.” Sam looked close to passing out, either from exhaustion or disgust or both.

“You said I was out for three days?” he asked, falling back into the hospital bed, the phone falling from his limp fingers. If this meant what he feared it meant—if Bucky’s long, long absence wasn’t just a horrid coincidence—if that stab attempt had been—had been—Bucky had lived there, for so long—he’d gone through that—turned into a— “What if—if he’s out there, if he was able to escape—?”

“His chances are pretty narrow, Rogers,” Sam muttered. “C’you even think of where to start looking?”

“Here.” Steve swallowed. “In D.C. He mentioned something about an apartment. About working at the docks. Could’ve been a lie. But maybe not. He said he’d been hiding.” He felt his stomach turning. _Please let him have made it out,_ he prayed. Not back to that—that _thing_ called HYDRA— “He mentioned New Orleans. Said he’d had roommates there, the two who fought that assassin the second night. Clint, and, uh…Nat.”

“Those two are long gone, but I’ll call in a few favors,” Sam told him, “if you swear to me you’re not leaving this room til you’re at full health.”

Steve steeled his jaw. “Deal. Anything, any information you need from me—just say the word.”

And for two more nights he itched against invisible manacles, his prayers soaring to the heights his body could not reach.

* * *

Nat, Clint, Lucky, and _their new best friend in the universe for all eternity and beyond, times ten hundred million—_ Bruce—threw a celebration the night that Pierce’s arrest made the national news. Well, as much of a rager as three people, Nat’s laptop’s shitty speakers, a bottle of tequila, and a dog could comprise.

Gone. The Lumerian-Star Institute had been lain to waste, its ashes salted. The matrons were put in high-security prisons, the scientists interrogated, the files confiscated, the students sent to rehabilitation centers. Legitimate ones.

After the radiation therapist finally bade them goodnight, muttering about not being in college anymore and needing a real bedtime, Nat returned to her laptop. Clint murmured something akin to _gotta soak it up_ and headed out to steal a few pizzas. “Maybe a cake. I’m feeling cake is in order.”

Rumlow had returned to D.C. the instant he’d dropped Nat and Clint off at Bruce’s secret little haven, an abandoned soda-bottling plant in a tiny Tennessee town. Had searched for Barnes nonstop since his hit on Rogers instantly became breaking news, had gone viral.

A botched assassination at the hands of a beloved friend returned from the dead. A tremendously successful fundraising event that nearly tripled its goal amount. And, with a single keystroke on Nat’s keypad, a fatal blow to Alexander Pierce’s reputation.

“Give me the last slice,” Clint commanded several hours later, enunciating clearly.

“NO!” Nat hollered, stuffing the pizza into her mouth as Clint beamed. They high-fived.

Victory.

Well, certainly the victory she had long needed. But not entirely the one she wanted then and there.

“You deserve a vacation, Bruce,” Clint announced the next morning. “Wanna come down south with us?”

The doctor laughed and shook his head. “Tempting, but a vacation’s really the last thing on my mind right now. I plan on posting the location of this place to some of the deepnet forums you showed me. Anyone else who could benefit from the radiation therapy is invited.”

“I get that.” Clint nodded. “You’re a class act, Doc.”

“We’ll bring you some souvenirs,” Nat promised. “And, hopefully, at least one new patient.”

They stole a Jeep this time. Not a Wrangler. “Too many cases of kids getting strangled by their own seatbelts in wrecks,” Nat warned Clint. “Shitty suspension design.”

Their apartment had remained untouched in their short time away. No sign of Barnes, or of anyone else. No notes, no red herrings that would point others away from notes, not one scoop of French Truck coffee missing from the fat bag in the freezer.

“You don’t think Pierce hid him somewhere…?”

But Nat wouldn’t hear it.

Rogers’ social media had been locked up, unfortunately. She externally pinned her comments to the top of his public page but even those were removed by the admins, who then proceeded to lock her IP address out of the site. _Petty dicks._

“He hasn’t picked up his home phone at all, and there’s some kind of AI on his cell.” That genuinely freaked Nat out. Only a handful of people potentially that invested in Rogers' reputation would successfully cross-reference with the names Nat knew were talented in that tier of active defensive coding. _Stark...?_

“Don’t give up, Nat. Rumlow’s still looking.”

The raid on the Lemurian-Star Institute had not been televised, but Nat nonetheless procured the SWAT reports from her intelligence circles. “All the students were identified,” she relayed to him as rain pounded on their tin roof overhead. “He wasn’t with them.” _Damn it, Barnes…_

“They didn’t find anyone else in Pierce’s apartment,” Clint tried to reassure her. “Maybe he made it out, but I’d still be afraid of Pierce’s reach if I were him. He’ll come back, come looking for us. Once he’ll think it’s safe to come out. Don’t give up on him, Nat.”

After six days, they finally heard from Rumlow. “I canvassed _all of D.C.,_ ” he spat into the receiver. “From below the ground up. No fuckin' way he’s still in the city. You two wanna retrace that road trip you all made after busting out?”

“We're headed to San Antonio now,” Nat murmured, feeling her heart sinking. “I did some checking, and it turns out we actually stopped there at the same time Rogers did, a few years back. We weren't with Barnes the entire time. There's a chance he could have met with Rogers there, could have, I dunno. Set up an emergency rendezvous point.”

It definitely would have explained his shiftiness immediately following that stop, and the subtle change in his subsequent reactions each time she'd brought him up. Only now did it click. Nat could have smacked herself for not realizing sooner.

"Meet you there. This may sound crazy, but I kinda feel like I'm bein' tailed."

Clint scowled. "No shit? HYDRA?"

"Nah. They're too obvious. Kinda smell like feds. I'll keep you posted."

"Take care, man. We'll call you the second we hear anything."

"You'd better."

* * *

“No sign of him in New Orleans,” Sam told him as they strode together out of the hospital. “And not much more here in D.C. Found some DNA of his in an apartment not too far from the Hill. Enough to connect him to Pierce—and also to a guy about his age, named Brock Rumlow. But nothing that suggests he’s returned there since the night he attacked you.”

“We could go to that—that place,” Steve suggested, his voice breaking halfway through his sentence. “Even if he wasn’t there during the raid, there could be a clue—”

“They wiped it down, Rogers. And even if you had the necessary top-level CIA clearance to get in, it’s still got mobs of pissed-off paparazzi swarming the perimeter.” Sam shook his head. “But my man Lang says he may have a lead on the Rumlow dude—that he’s headed west now, to meet up with a few more people. We may be able to catch him if I fly out to San Antonio this afternoon.”

"Sam..." Steve exhaled slowly, touched at how far Sam had been willing to go to find his friend. But Texas was just _so_ far away. Did Bucky really have any chance at making it all the way out there, burning from his pain the whole time?

Something else seemed to gnaw at his heart then. Something obvious, that he’d just—just blanked over, in his fretting—oh. Oh, no. _Of course._

“Let's split up,” he said, fishing a Metro pass from his wallet. They’d returned his personal items that morning from the forensics lab, having found plenty of Bucky’s DNA on the handkerchief—the same one now tucked into the pocket over his heart. “Let me know if you can get anything out of Rumlow.”

“Yeah? Where’re you headed, then?”

Steve took a deep breath. “Brooklyn.”

* * *

He’d never reported back in to Pierce. Had never returned to the apartment. Had failed. Had failed. Had failed.

Had _disobeyed._

Instead he followed his feet, bleaching out whole sections of his memory while his body worked. The less he had to compare against the pain, the less damage the pain could inflict, or so he told himself. Just had to keep walking, keep walking. Steady and slow.

His vision had long gone, blurring colors and shapes and vivid lines every so often that seemed to signal that he’d smashed his head against something. Then again, who really knew? Not him.

Wetness. Something sticky that congealed all too quickly, something that smelled awfully red.

Hands. Warm, cold, young, old, hands at his shoulders and arms and on his chest, trying to stop him, asking something in concerned tones. He batted them away. At least, his arms did.

He wanted to latch onto them all, with his own. Wanted to hold someone’s hand. Anyone’s. Well, one person’s in particular, if he had to be completely honest. Some little punk's, whose name he could not quite recall.

On the worse days, he felt himself go horizontal. Felt the telltale pricks of gravel against his forehead, the stinging of insects. Tripping, literally and figuratively. Spiritually.

And still his legs moved. Their own fun sort of pain signaled to a base part of his hindbrain that maybe he’d been walking for a few days too long without rest, that maybe his boots had begun to shred. That maybe his muscles were close to disintegrating, that the blisters on his soles had erupted again.

On the better days, he could almost see. He managed to leap onto a flatbed train car, earning himself agonizing pain—then numbness—in his hands and legs and shoulders, and the sensation of wind whipping his face and his hair. Wind, or stray branches, he couldn’t quite decide. More of that salty-sticky liquid streamed from his face and hands.

Occasionally he could make out the garments clinging to his body—mostly black, one white, all eerily light and inappropriate for the weather. More than once he could detect a weapon in his pocket. And for reasons he could not fathom, the feel of that knife in his fingers always brought tears to his eyes and a burning sensation to his throat. Nothing like the lightning-pain, of course, but still a welcome distraction from the churning dome that was his prison.

He spent an eternity and a half inside that dome, walking in place, his feet moving, yet the ground held still. Well, ground. What was ground? What wasn’t ground? Sometimes he forgot what his feet were. Those were scary times. He frequently wondered what other things he’d forgotten. And then he’d forget what to wonder about.

Into quiet, miserable tranquility he folded. Into stillness. Into the cold. The word _winter_ sprang to mind, whatever that meant. His mind (what was a _mind?_ ) was weird like that (what was _weird?_ ).

Something hard smacked him in the face, and he felt himself crumple downward.

_Ow._

If only his eyes could work. He reached one hand out. Felt something rough, jagged, yet also spongey; giving, if he pressed hard enough. A flexible hardness, rather than a brittle one.

_Sudden-tree?_

…Whatever _that_ meant, he thought, as the dome around him went black.

* * *

The Barnes’ old brownstone had been a no-go, now happily occupied by a middle-aged lesbian couple who promised him that a strange man with a metal arm hadn’t appeared at any point in the past week. "But we're so glad you're feeling better, Captain! Good luck, and we'll keep an eye out!"

Then Steve had checked his aunt’s old house, now a foreclosed blight. Perfect hiding spot, really. But no sign of Bucky, nor of any other would-be squatter. Only dead grass, under a layer of litter. _Damn it—_

No. He couldn’t give up. Not now. So what if this place had been a dead end? Sam would be meeting his friend any minute, would call with a new lead, maybe. Maybe.

He thoroughly searched their high school, then their middle school, their favorite deli, the alley where Bucky had first found him getting his shit kicked in, then Bucky’s church, then the graveyard with his dad’s body—and, Steve noted in horror, now his mom’s. That whole time, Bucky had mentioned nothing about losing a second parent.

_Did he know?_

It would have happened long after Buck had left for—for _college—_

Fuck—

Steve idly pulled the cloth from his breast pocket and wiped his neck. Amazing, really, how that threadbare thing had made it so long without shredding into dust, without— He blinked. Snapped his jaw shut.

_Oh._

He ran.

Retracing his steps to the park was easy. How many times had he walked this path in the eighteen years this borough had been his turf? Tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Unbelievable, really, that he hadn’t first thought to check there. Sure, it was a narrow shot. Narrow as hell. But he’d take anything at this point. Needed anything he could cling to—anything—

And miraculously, _impossibly_ , at the base of a huge tree, the same exact one under which they’d first met—

Steve felt his knees give out long after he’d collapsed to the ground, scuffing the heel of his hand. Lunged forward, picking himself up, half-stumbling to the tree’s thick roots, to the huddled figure leaning against its broad trunk—

Bucky was deaf to him, and then blind, as Steve tipped his friend’s chin up to better view his face, his hands shaking out of control as he registered his friend’s condition, or lack thereof.

Blood streaks from his eyes trailed down his cheeks and throat. Scratch marks on every visible inch of him and rips in his clothes, the same suit from that horrid night a week back—open gashes, massive bruising, a pronounced lack of body heat—Christ, it had to _hurt—_ he had to be hurting— _baby—no—_

But he was alive. The gleaming black beads of that rosary rose and fell, rose and fell against his chest. Bucky was alive. Heart beating, lungs pumping, however weakly. Alive, if not kicking. _Alive._

 _“Bucky,”_ he croaked, pulling the poor thing against his chest, stroking his dirty hair, feeling more dried blood along the scalp. Jesus. “C’you hear me? Bucky. It’s me. It’s Steve. I’m here. I’m here.” Ignoring the stinging in his own eyes, Steve pulled that amazing little cloth out of his pocket and pressed it into Bucky’s hand, folding his chapped and scarred fingers over it. “Buck? Bucky. C’mon, sweetheart, hang in there—”

And Bucky actually moved his mouth. “W-who’s—“ He wheezed, his voice ragged. “Who’s there…?”

Hearing Bucky’s voice, no matter its degraded state, was enough of a shot in the arm for Steve to keep pressing. “It’s me, Bucky. It’s Steve. Steve Rogers. You _know_ me.”

Bucky’s mouth twitched, quirked upwards. “No I _don’t._ ” His words were as wet, ragged, and thin as the rest of him.

Steve sniffed, pushing his forehead against Bucky’s, as though he could transmit memories through touch. What a lovely world that would be, he thought, his eyes spilling over.

“You’ve known me your whole life,” he murmured, squeezing Bucky’s hands in his own, over that thin scrap of fabric. “You’re my friend.”

_My darling. My everything._

Bucky’s voice countered once again, more gravel than tone. “You’re—my mission,” he croaked, squeezing that cloth. Inhaling sharply. His unseeing eyes widened ever so slightly. Just enough.

“Yeah. Yeah, your mission. You failed it, Bucky. You disobeyed. You beat it. Pierce has been arrested. You’re safe.” He kissed the shell of Bucky’s ear, coated in dried blood from where one of his earrings had been ripped out. “You’re free.”

 _Free,_ Bucky mouthed soundlessly. He pursed his lips, his hands shaking as he continued to squeeze the cloth Steve had given him. Shuddered.

“Yeah, you're free,” Steve whispered into Bucky’s mouth, as though Bucky could taste his avowal. _Free, baby._

“You’re...a punk,” Bucky coughed, flicking a hot tongue against Steve's lip.

_YES_

Laughing through his tears, Steve kissed his friend again. “You’re a jerk. One in serious need of medical attention. Let’s get you to a—” His cell had begun to ring. “—hospital…?”

Sam’s ringtone. He fished the phone from his pocket and picked up the call.

“Hey, man—”

 _“I found him,”_ Steve all but bellowed into the receiver. “He’s alive, in Brooklyn. I’m taking him to a hospital now. He’s—”

“No shit! Hey, and we found his friends,” Sam cut in. “Or rather, they found us. I’m sending Stark your coordinates now. Should just be a minute or so. Don’t bother with a normal hospital—we’re gonna need to airlift this guy to Tennessee, pronto.”

Steve exhaled sharply. _Stark?_ And, for that matter, “What the hell’s in Tennessee?”

“Someone who’s successfully cured every single case sent his way—cases like your—like our friend's.” Not Sam’s voice—a woman’s throaty monotone had joined their call. “Thank hell you found him in time, Rogers. I was beginning to have my doubts—”

“That makes one of us,” yet another voice cut in. A young man’s, slurring somewhat at the end of each word. “I knew that kid would survive. Hey, Wilson, how long did you say it'd take that asshole to pick 'em up?”

“ _This asshole_ is thirty seconds out,” a fourth voice answered. A familiar one.

“That you, Stark?” Steve actually laughed in spite of himself. “What street are you approaching from? I can meet you at—”

“Streets? Please. Look up, Cap. Your ten o’clock…your other ten o’clock...there you go.”

Steve’s jaw dropped at the sight of an honest-to-god _VTOL_ making a steady descent into the park, the soft humming of its five engines gradually growing louder as it approached. “Who the hell let you have one of those?”

“First of all, fuck you, and second of all, I built it,” Tony Stark laughed. “Gonna be a thank-you present to Miss Natalia for her outstanding contributions to the internet last week. I call it the Quinjet.”

“What a charmer,” the younger man chortled. “Wait til he finds out a bottle of Svedka would’ve sufficed.”

“It would have, but I suppose I can accept a jet. Just this once.”

“C’you put him on?” yet another unfamiliar voice asked, a pleasantly gravelly tenor. "Barnes, you there?"

“Rumlow...?” Bucky croaked, shaking in Steve’s arm.

“Ha! That’s enough for me,” the voice replied, half in laughter. “Get ‘im here, Cap.”

“See you all soon,” Steve laughed tearfully into his phone before dropping the call. “Let’s go, Bucky.” He carefully reached under his friend’s knees with one arm and around his back with the other, cradling him gently against his chest. Stark lowered the Quinjet’s rear bay door, and the Stark Industries CEO herself helped guide them up the loading ramp.

“He looks awful,” Pepper breathed, covering her mouth with one immaculately-manicured hand. “Rhodey, do we—?”

“Way ahead of you, Pep.” A finely-suited man slid a thin steel gurney from the Quinjet’s interior wall and unlatched an enormous critical-care kit. Everything from oxygen masks to IVs appeared to lurk within. “These won’t end the pain, but should at least take the edge off. He'll be stable til we can get him to the doctor.”

 _Praise be._ “You were in Fury’s extended team the third night,” Steve realized aloud. “You took down the first assassin.”

James Rhodes nodded. “My pleasure, Cap. Shame we missed the one right under our nose, though.” His gaze softened at the sight of the bloodied thing Steve carefully laid onto the gurney. “Another shame we took so long to find him. Looks like he’s been through hell.”

“Tony briefed us all—on HYDRA, on your friend—everything.” Pepper shook her head. “I can’t believe Pierce was sitting on top of such a nightmare this whole time we’ve known him.”

“He was the one who ordered Bucky to kill me,” Steve murmured, squeezing Bucky’s frigid hand. “But it wasn’t enough. That mutation wasn’t enough. He missed every vital artery—I lost plenty of blood, yeah, but not nearly enough to bleed out before my healing kicked in.”

“Goodness,” Pepper laughed. “I’ll have to thank him for messing up once he’s back to his normal self. But...how the hell could he have overpowered that mutation?”

“Some things are stronger than pain,” Rhodey mused aloud. “Worth more than respite from it.”

Wasn’t that the truth. But, Steve thought as Stark broke the sound barrier, maybe they had a shot at finally ending his friend’s pain. Had a shot at bringing Bucky back, for good.

Or as much of himself as he cared to give. No doubt they had a long road ahead of them. Bucky had been through trauma, through years of it. Had fought and resisted and still been forced into submission for so long, for too long. Would undoubtedly be different from the person Steve had known, all those years back.

But whatever self Bucky wanted to assume, Steve absolutely knew he would love, no matter what.

“Steve...” Bucky murmured in his direction, his eyes fluttering open, bloodshot and dripping. "Where’re we going...?"

Steve grinned as Rhodey ducked into the copilot seat, Pepper promising them touchdown in under an hour. He kissed Bucky’s forehead, his jaw, his chapped lips that nonetheless smiled ever so lightly under his touch.

_God, look what they’ve done to you. If I’d been any later—any slower—waited any longer—_

But he had made it in time. That was all that mattered. Everything else they could sort out later. Right now, Bucky was here, and alive.

“Nowhere. Just hang in there, Buck. Stay with me.” He clutched his friend’s hand as the IVs began to drip, intertwining their fingers. Bucky squeezed him, the faintest hint of a smile still gracing those red, red lips.

“'Kay…should I…should—? Ughn—”

“Just keep breathing,” Steve ordered. “You’re doing fine. Just stay here. Stay in the present.”

For god’s sake, the future could _wait._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My personal soundtrack for the reunion scene: [Kiss the Void](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd-GDNJ_1uY).  
> One chapter left, darlings. My eternal thanks for all your sweet words thus far.


	13. Chapter 13

* * *

The whirring of the sandalwood ceiling fan overhead lulled Bucky into consciousness, gentle as any lullaby.

Gentle was a pretty great word for just about everything in that room, he mused. Low-slung, linen-covered bed, knit floor cushions, thick hand-woven rugs, folded blankets lazily tossed every two feet. Scented candles, essential oils. Soft, recessed lighting. The look in his bedmate’s eyes, as Bucky rolled over to face him.

Neither said a word. Made any subsequent motions. Budged.

Just languid, luscious eye contact. Long, golden eyelashes, batting occasionally. Okay, maybe a smile popped up here or there. Maybe Bucky puckered his lips ever so briefly, eliciting a quiet chuckle from Steve.

“What time’s it,” he whispered eventually, when feather-light rain had begun to patter against the veranda beyond the sliding glass door.

Steve gave the barest suggestion of a shrug. “Probably morning.”

“Probably morning,” Bucky repeated, closing his eyes. Fine with him. “When’d we go to bed?”

“I remember seeing around four-thirty before fading,” Steve recalled aloud before glancing at his low night stand. “Let’s see…yeah, hey. It’s nine now.”

Bucky blinked. Grinned. Nearly five hours—new record. “I didn’t wake up anytime, either.”

Steve lightly brushed his lips against Bucky’s forehead. “How’re you feeling?”

“Good.” He lowered his eyelids. “Kinda cold.”

“Yeah? C—wait.” Steve cut himself off, regarding Bucky through half-lidded eyes. “ _Don’t_ come any closer.”

“That’s reverse-psychology, and you’re still a punk.” Nonetheless Bucky laughed gleefully through his nose and rapidly cinched the distance between them, letting Steve fold those massive arms around him. He nearly dozed off again, tucked securely against Steve’s chest, heat coating him from all sides. Bliss.

Twenty-three days and counting since he’d woken up on a cot in the middle of an abandoned factory, IVs and monitors blinking at him from all sides, surrounded by people he both recognized and had never seen before in his life. One of the familiar ones—Steve’s roommate-coworker-friend—Sam—had smiled at him. And an eerily familiar one whose name Bucky had not quite remembered had made some kind of quip regarding his apparently serious case of _resting-bitch-face._

“Who even is this guy?” Rumlow had eventually asked in Steve’s— _Steve’s alive,_ he’d processed, dumbfounded—direction.

 _Steve—he’s alive—I—I didn’t—_ Bucky had swallowed the pain in his throat, had laughed in spite of the stinging of his eyes. _I failed. I failed, he’s alive—he’s here—it wasn't just a dream—_

Steve had been there, and he’d looked happy. Relieved. _About what?_ Not dying, Barnes reasoned. _He should be furious with me—he should be—_

“The _former_ Stark Industries CEO,” another half-familiar voice replied. “One that’s cruising for a bruising, if I’m evaluating Steve’s expression accurately.” The voice’s owner smiled gently at him, her eyes rimmed with exhaustion. “Glad you made it out okay, Seb—excuse me. Bucky.”

“Why don’t we all just calm down for a moment,” another of the unfamiliar faces had gently cut in, his brown eyes soft behind a pair of dusty glasses. “How are you feeling, Mister Barnes? Any pain?”

He’d swallowed, had closed his eyes, had assessed his condition. More flesh wounds and small cuts than he’d ever remembered wearing at any one point in his life up to that moment, Red Room sessions included. And from what he could tell, his feet were _fucked._

 _What happened to me?_ “Confused,” he’d answered. “Kinda hungry. My feet hurt. A lot.”

“We think you walked from D.C. to Brooklyn,” Nat— _Nat’s here, Clint’s here—_ had told him, her words slow and thick with disbelief. “Still trying to figure out the logistics of that. Gotta say, I’m kind of impressed.”

Brooklyn?

Oh. _Oh._

“I jumped on a fucking train,” he had recalled aloud, closing his eyes. “Or at least I remember a train? I remember walking. Dunno how I made it to Brooklyn, though.” Fucking Brooklyn. He’d looked at Steve. “How’d you survive? I thought—I thought I’d—”

Steve had grinned and squeezed his hand. “It was you, man. You missed every major artery when you stabbed me. Yeah, I lost a lot of blood, but…”

“You _missed?_ ” Clint breathed. “Did I hear that wrong? You—you couldn’t have missed. Not with your Red Room conditioning—and definitely not, with Pierce’s orders—”

 _Pierce._ Bucky had shuddered, feeling bile rise in his throat. “Where’s Pierce?” he hissed.

“Easy, easy.” Steve had begun stroking the back of his flesh hand, rubbing between his knuckles. “They’ve put him away, Buck. We made sure of it.” He had nodded toward Nat. “She made sure of it.”

It turned out that Nat had put all of her findings from their prison tour and subsequent New Orleans stay into one neat package, left in a variety of file formats on several different public online forums for all to see and discuss. It had begun trending instantly.

“So this place—this is where you got cured?” Bucky had asked her.

Nat nodded, pulling the man with the glasses in for a quick hug. “Same with yourself,” she had told him. “You were still feeling the effects—that punishment for disobeying, for breaking your order—when Steve found you.”

_What—?_

“We’re lucky your cerebral tissue hadn’t started deteriorating yet,” the man in the glasses had continued. “Your brain activity was through the roof, all your pain receptors running full-stop. I’ve never heard of anyone staying conscious through that level of pain, much less able to jump onto—a train, you said?”

_All your pain receptors running—_

Another man cut in then, having returned from a hushed phone call across the room. “You were in godawful shape when we found you. But as soon as Doctor Banner put you under the radiation, you finally relaxed. Like whatever was torturing you just, eh. Retracted.” He grinned. “Disappeared.” Bucky had recognized him—from the third gala, he was pretty sure, whispering something to the same tall lady who had spoken to him earlier. Presently the man slid the phone into his navy jacket. _Air Force,_ Bucky processed.

“A little while back, Brucie here figured out how to use gamma radiation to separate the synaptic nerves for higher functioning from that trigger process formed with HYDRA’s mutation,” Stark had elaborated. “The one that forced you to feel pain every time you believed you weren’t following a command. You’re clean, Barnes.”

Only now did Bucky recall that his jaw had slackened upon that last sentence.

“What’re you—wait, he’s already fixed me?” His heart had threatened to burst from his chest. “That’s what I’m waking up from?”

“You’re not gonna believe this, Bucky,” Steve had exclaimed. “Like—uh. Punch me. In the face. Right now. Do it.”

He’d braced himself accordingly. Now that the memories of everything—the galas, Dottie’s attacks, his own attempt at Steve—at Steve’s life— _no._ Punching him was the last thing on the fucking planet that Bucky felt like doing right now.

And so he waited. Waited for the lightning to flare up, to force his hands into acting according to its will, bending his body away from his mind. Waited for the pain.

Only, the pain never came.

There he’d lain, his heart pounding, chest heaving, with Steve’s beautiful face hovering over his. And his hands had remained firmly at his sides.

“I don’t want to,” Bucky had spat, giving Steve a specific look. “I want something else.”

He’d begun smiling uncontrollably by that point. Had felt a curious lightness to his bones. Felt like he could soar if he tried. Could fly.

“Yes?” Banner had asked, checking his pulse. “What is it you need? Are you in any pain? The IVs have brought your fluids back up, but it’s been a while since you’ve eaten solid—”

“I think I know what he wants,” Sam had cackled, propping one elbow on Rumlow’s shoulder.

“I think we all do,” Rumlow had added. Nat and Clint had snickered in unison.

“Not to go puritanical on you or anything,” Stark had deadpanned then, “but you may wanna wait to climb that dick until after your lacerations have closed up. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it may be worth—”

“Jesus Christ, Stark.” Steve’s face had flushed into a deep, luscious pink. Bucky knew without having to check that the blush continued down Steve’s neck and spilled onto his shoulders and chest muscles. “You are so lucky I’m in debt to you right now, because—”

“Hey, big fella, this one’s on the house. Least I could do for a national hero who’d nearly been assassinated the week before. And no less by his poor, brainwashed, cute little friend who looks like he could definitely use a good—”

“Oh my god, _lay off—_ ”

“It’s sound advice, though,” Bucky had murmured, idly lowering his hand to scratch behind the fuzzy ears of—whoa, Lucky? Lucky, happily panting away—“No dick-climbing until the IVs are out. Promise.” Oh, to think he’d considered Steve flushed before… “Cool VTOL, by the way. Name’s kinda dorky, though.”

“Rogers, do you have good taste in friends?” Stark had breathed in faux shock. “I’m appalled that you’ve kept this one from me for so long.”

“Finders keepers,” Steve had spat. “And, no. If I had good taste in friends, you wouldn’t be here.”

Stark had smacked Steve’s ass, by the sound of it. “Touché. Well, c’mon, _friends,_ let’s give these two _friends_ some privacy. Gosh, with _friends_ like that, who really needs enemies? Or death wishes? Or…”

“Man, shut the hell up.”

The others had gently trooped out of the large room, laughing and murmuring until silence had fallen over himself and Steve. That next part had been nice. Nothing to say, nothing to ask. Just a mouth on his, and hot fingers intertwining with his own, flesh and metal alike.

Just like right now. Presently Bucky shook his head in amusement at the memory. What a great day it had been, all in all. A good group of people, all in all. Flying everyone back to meet up with Peggy and Angie had been the best part.

Well, that, and also Bruce running the gamma radiation treatment on Dottie.

The combined force of Sam and Colonel James Rhodes had actually defeated a Red Room graduate, with Rhodes getting a clean shot while Sam had tangled her in a grapple. Pepper had helped Fury find a secure cell for her. Had interrogated her. Had listened, carefully, not just to her choice of words, but to what had lain between them. By then Peggy had returned with the findings of her CIA database mining. Had done the math. Had told Steve, who had told him, and he'd told Nat.

As much as Bucky had thought he’d received the worst of the Red Room, well. Shows what he’d known.

Peggy and cured-Dottie’s reunion had been something walking that curious ley line between the distant isles of heartbreaking and heartwarming. Apologies were made, with Carter’s lack of any tolerance for bullshit silencing Dottie’s pleas to turn her back over to the police.

“Please, Peg, it’s not like I have anywhere else to go,” the blonde had breathed, ashen-faced, a broken smile overtaking her features. “Maybe it’s for the best. I’ve hurt so many people—could still—”

“Then hurt me,” Angie had cut in, uncrossing her arms. “Right now. C’mon. I know you know how to use those fists.”

And Dottie had frozen. Had blinked. Had smiled, had laughed. Had cried.

"That's what I thought. How about we make a deal?"

"Peg—"

"Clean up your damage, Dottie. Help us. We could use someone with your talents."

"Y'think so?"

"I promise. We've plenty of work to do yet."

Back outside of his memories, Bucky pressed his lips under Steve’s jaw. “I wanna go outside.”

“Into the rain?” Steve laughed through his nose. “That wouldn’t short out your arm, would it?”

“Nah. Waterproof. Three-hundred foot depth.” He wanted to feel those tiny soft splashes on his shoulders more than anything else in the world just then.

They stretched out alongside one another on the deck, laughing reflexively as the misting droplets tickled their skin. “Okay, this was a good idea.”

It was one good idea. Bucky had another, and rolled over to rest atop Steve’s broad chest, splaying his legs on either side of Steve’s. “You got any plans this week?” he asked, tracing circles around Steve’s chest tattoo with his flesh hand. Not even the faintest of scars remained from where he'd struck. _Unbelievable._

“Mmm. Uh, I mean. I’m, uh. Supposed to deliver the benefit money to the charities. On, uh. Thursday.” Steve’s mouth had begun to water.

“And after that?”

“Nothing on the agenda.” Steve ran his hands down Bucky’s back, resting them at the dip in the base of his spine. “You got anything in mind?”

“I do, actually.” Bucky grinned, mentally assigning words to the abstract ideas that had been floating around his head all morning. “I think I wanna go on a road trip.”

“Yeah? That does sound good.” Steve smiled. “Any particular stops in mind?”

“Yeah. A few.” Bucky licked his lower lip. “Nat thinks she can root out the locations of more people like—like us. Like what we were. People who could use Banner’s therapy.” He gave Steve the best winning smile he could muster. “I’d like to find them. If that’s cool with you.”

Steve beamed. “Absolutely! Business trip, huh. Yeah, I’m down.” He leaned up to kiss Bucky’s forehead. “It might be kinda tough, seeing what’s become of them. You think you’ll be okay, getting a close look into that again?”

Relaying his account to Steve—of his time in the Red Room, and then of his abduction, of the revelation of Pierce, of Pierce’s command—had been almost too much for him. Had been its own slice of hell. Distressing, and embarrassing, no matter how frequently Steve swore he had nothing to feel ashamed of. Visiting his mother's grave had almost been too much.

But he’d made it through, now with one more person willing to share that weight.

Bucky swallowed, conceding. “I, uh. Yeah, I thought about that. It’s not gonna be easy, on either of us.”

“It could be like opening up a wound. One you were hoping would finally get to heal.” Steve considered him carefully through those angelic eyelashes.

Learning about all of Steve’s trials overseas had planted in Bucky an even greater, newfound respect for his long-lost little troll of a martyr. Finally all those knee-jerk reactions to douchebags and bullies had gotten Steve somewhere—only for it to all break down in front of his eyes. The utter disillusionment, the unraveling of something he’d aspired to be for so much of his life—no wonder he’d come home so ready to crusade for the rights of those unable to stand for themselves. No wonder he’d been all too willing to risk everything, even his own life. To make that last stand against those eager to crush to dust everything he believed and championed.

But those forces hadn’t bet on their best gun jamming at the last second. HYDRA hadn’t bet on its metal fist missing its intended target. Pierce had bet on James Buchanan Barnes, but not on Bucky.

“But if you come with me,” Bucky replied, “I think I’ll be okay.”

“You mean it?” Steve’s grin was contagious. “’Cause there’s no place I’d rather be. You know that, right?”

“I think I gathered,” he replied, draping himself gently over Steve before pouring his tongue into Steve’s mouth. There it was, that gentle bliss. Steve’s warm hands kneading his back, Steve’s hot breath mingling with his own. How Bucky had missed him. Had missed this.

Well, he only had the rest of his life to make up for lost time. Might as well start now.

They were soaked by that point, the tiny drops of rain having finally coated their skin over that span of time. Steve ran one hand through Bucky’s damp hair, laughing into his mouth. “Wanna continue this inside?”

“Race you to the shower.” Bucky rolled off of Steve and onto his feet with the finesse and speed of an Olympian gymnast, beating Steve’s lunge for the patio door by a good half-second.

“No fair,” Steve cackled, struggling to pull off his tank top once he’d returned to his feet. It had grown translucent and tight thanks to the rain. “You got a head start, jerk.”

“Quit whining, punk.” Bucky helped him with the rest of his soaked garments. Well, _helped_ was a word. _Clutched Steve’s cock through his boxers_ was a phrase. So was _ground himself up against the love of his life until they both were panting and flushed._ That shower stall beckoned.

* * *

“He has no idea you’ve been to Bruce’s,” Nat told him. “So make of that what you will.”

“Got it.”

In they walked.

There was Pierce, curiously stately even in his prison uniform, seated with one leg over the other, hands folded neatly, one top the other, both manacled to the steel table between himself and the door. He looked to be the interviewer rather than the interviewee.

“Heya, James.”

 _James._ Likely a remnant of their time as stepfather and stepson, Nat thought. _Nasty._

“Pierce.”

“I have to say, I’m awfully impressed at your resilience. The punishment you should be feeling right now must be excruciating.”

Barnes looked at him through half-lidded eyes. “Tell me why you picked me of all people to do it, Pierce. Why not…why not Rumlow? Or Dottie? Why—”

“Don’t pretend Dottie or Rumlow would have been half so efficient, James. Rumlow is too wily, as we saw with your disobedience the day of the second event. Too much freedom leads to unpredictable behavior. Now, Dottie simply doesn’t have the hold on Rogers that you have. She may have executed him efficiently, but he’d have died a martyr. They have no history, and she’d have no traceable motive. The media simply wouldn't perceive Rogers as the type to force himself on a random stranger.” Pierce grinned. “You were simply the best choice. I’d say it was nothing personal—”

“Sorry, but it feels pretty personal,” Steve growled. Nat made a show of raising an eyebrow, as though she had not expected that bite in his tone. _Way to hold it back, Rogers._ Not sarcasm.

“Everybody out, now.” Barnes placed his hands on his hips.

“Bucky—”

“Let’s let him have this,” Nat murmured, grabbing Steve by the arm and ushering him out alongside Rumlow and Clint. “He’ll be fine.”

“But—“

“C’mon.”

They trooped up behind the one-way mirror and watched. Nat allowed herself to lick her lips in anticipation. Peggy nodded to the surveillance guards, who left to stand next to the interrogation room’s door. She turned the volume up.

“Dangerous, James, leaving yourself alone like this.”

“Dangerous how?”

“Your training was bulletproof, James. I made sure of it. Spent unfathomable sums of money ensuring those matrons would bestow their complete knowledge upon you. That arm of yours came from my campaign fundraising, I hope you know.”

“Good to hear. Better their money was spent on me than on you.”

“But it was spent on me, James. Everything you do is for my benefit. Whether you realize it or not. Understand?”

“Make me understand,” Barnes hissed.

Pierce took a deep breath. “You will break me free from these manacles, escort me unharmed from this base, take out anyone in your way, and drive me to a location I will disclose once we’re free from this building.”

Steve took a deep breath but remained still otherwise. Rumlow laughed through his nose.

"I’ve seen the security measures and how the guards are armed,” Barnes replied slowly. “I cannot guarantee I can get you to an exit.”

“I...I see.” Pierce sighed, leaning back in his seat. “Then kill me. Right here. Now.”

Nat grinned as Barnes lifted one eyebrow and pulled a tiny pistol from his jacket— _Intratec TEC-38,_ she processed. _Cute._

Peggy sucked in a breath. “Damn it—we _need_ Pierce alive for the trial—”

“How’d he get that past the security scanners?!” Steve hissed. Clint pat him gently on the back.

“He knows how the scanners work,” Rumlow laughed. “We all do.”

Nat shrugged. "Pierce has this coming, Rogers. It’s Barnes' decision.”

“But—”

“Hold off on that, Peg,” Rumlow told her as she reached for the alarm. “Trust me.”

“You're sure—?”

"Pretty sure."

James pressed the tiny pistol against Pierce’s forehead. “Won’t this be nice,” Nat could barely hear him murmur. “Save you the embarrassment of a trial, of a life in prison. Save you from watching all of HYDRA get flushed. Save yourself from being the one to blow it.”

Pierce grit his teeth. “You know it’s what you want as well, James. You’ll get to be the one to end me. Bury me with your own hands. Finish this.”

Barnes took a deep breath. Pushed the pistol further.

Waited.

Waited.

Re-latched the safety. Tucked the gun back into his jacket.

Pierce’s voice was eerily soft. As angry as she’d ever heard it, Nat thought. “James Buchanan Barnes. Shoot me in the head. _Now._ ”

Barnes took a step back. Crossed his arms. Ran his tongue across his lower lip.

“Frankly,” he finally replied, “I can’t wait til your trial. Gonna testify against you myself." He smiled. "See ya later.”

_“BARNES—”_

But Barnes had left the room by then. “We’re done,” he told the two guards outside.

Peggy breathed a sigh of relief and signaled for an escort to return Pierce to his cell.

Steve clutched his forehead as Barnes joined them. “Bucky…god damn…”

“Don’t tell me you bought that,” Barnes laughed, planting a kiss on Steve’s cheek.

“Hey, not everyone here had seen you in action,” Clint laughed. “I bet Steve doesn’t know how much cash you made back in the Quarter with your Red Room training.”

“I don’t think I even kept track,” Barnes laughed, squeezing Steve’s hand. “Sorry, Stevie, but I got pretty good at lying while I was away.”

“No kidding.” Steve kissed his knuckles. “But making Pierce pay for the damage he’s caused…that’s the Bucky I’ve always known.”

Nat looked away as they drew closer to each other. Something about public displays of affection, she guessed. Clint smirked, intertwining his hand in hers.

Rumlow picked up his cell. “Yeah? Yeah, we’re headed out now…ha. Sounds like a plan. See ya in a sec.”

“Yeah?” Barnes asked, perking up. “Where you headed?”

“Getting drinks with Wilson,” he replied, his eyes misting. “Says he’s got a proposition for me, work-wise. Apparently there's a slight demand for decent trackers in D.C.”

Peggy chuckled. “I’ll send word out when we begin prepping witnesses for the trial. In the meantime you're welcome to brunch with us next Sunday.” She hugged Barnes and Rogers. “I did promise Mr. Barnes a shopping trip.”

Steve grinned. “Careful what you wish for. He's a fiend.”

Nat slung one arm around Barton and they exited into the bright morning.

* * *

Two weeks later found them lounging in the bed of a pickup truck. Clint’s truck. Legally Clint’s, or so he pleaded in front of Captain America.

“Like I’ve never hotwired a car,” Steve had cracked. “I really don’t think I can fit in that back seat, though.”

The more sveldt Sam and Rumlow filed into the back instead, opting to fling snack bags or empty Coke cans at Steve and Bucky whenever they attempted anything unscrupulous out of the sight of Clint’s rearview mirror. Lucky sprawled himself over Steve’s long legs, the wind tugging at his floppy little ears.

“Y’know, I’ve never been to New Orleans,” Steve murmured, feeding Lucky a slice of jerky. “You told me you missed it.”

“All the best memories of my, uh, trek were there,” Bucky replied, unstopping a bottle of Espolón. “Wonder if our duplex is still standing. Pretty sure that house was older than my grandpa.”

“It is,” Nat called out through her rolled-down window. “And it’s also still standing. And the apartment on the other side is empty. I signed the lease for it this morning—didn’t think we’d all be able to sleep at night otherwise. Scarcely enough room inside to swing a knife around.”

Rumlow scoffed in disbelief. “You actually signed something? An official document?”

“As official as anything down there can be,” she laughed. “All my covers are blown. The Red Room is over. No reason to stay off the grid any longer.” She reached for Clint’s hand and kissed his knuckles.

Steve’s phone buzzed. _Two more successes,_ Peggy had texted him. She, Angie, and Dottie had taken to Bruce instantly, and, with Stark Industries backing, had transformed his little hideout into a full-blown legit medical station, squeaky clean for the inspectors. _Give Bucky my best._

“Peggy says they’re doing well. And also don’t ever come back because she’s sick of you stealing her clothes,” he laughed into Bucky’s ear.

“Not my fault she’s got good taste in blouses. And hats.” He grinned. “And lipsticks.”

“Now there’s a mental image,” Sam chortled through the open rear window. “No lie, I’d pay to see you all dolled up again."

"I should fucking hope so," Rumlow scoffed. "Spent way too much time picking out all that stuff. Good thing all my effort didn't go to waste."

Sam cracked up. "Kinda miss those galas, truth be told. Maybe Rogers can throw 'em again next year.”

Steve considered it. “Dunno why not. They were a huge success. Shouldn’t be too tough to find more bands to perform, and I know Stark had fun.” He pressed his mouth into Bucky’s hair. “ _I_ had fun.”

“You know what?” Bucky murmured over the lip of his bottle. “I kinda did, too, a little bit. Now that I think about it. Also, where the _hell_ did you learn to dance like that? 'cause I came pretty close to embarrassing myself in public.”

“Uh, good question,” Steve laughed. “Didn’t have any clue what I was doing. I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually danced before in my life.”

Bucky snuggled closer to him, closing his eyes as the hot summer breeze lifted up the strands of hair that had fallen loose from his bun. He’d streaked a few of them with gold. “Never? What took you so long to try?”

Steve wrapped one arm around his neck, pulling him into a slow kiss. “Just had to find the right partner. Had to wait for him to return. Prayed every night that he’d come back.”

Off into the sunset they rode, an iconic skyline awaiting them, its dark, glittering spires jutting up from a shimmering river. God, it was good. Bucky closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to Steve’s ear. “Hey, Stevie…?”

“Yeah?”

“I think he heard your prayers.”

* * *

_End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge shout-out to Tess for encouragement/letting me bounce ideas around. U R my hero breaux.  
> Thanks everyone for your sweet comments and constructive criticism!!  
> I have 2 other Avengers fics in the pipeline: [Clockwork](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6261757), a largely canon-compliant WinterPanther fic, and a [Tiger & Bunny](https://www.hulu.com/tiger-and-bunny) crossover starring Sam and Bucky, slated to drop sometime in 2017.


End file.
